


Torment

by keep_swinging



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A Good Amount of Langst, Allura and Coran as Minor Characters, Angst with all of the Paladins, Dark Fic Warning, Eventual Comfort, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Voltron Paladins, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Relationships, Some Keith Angst, Suspense, Torture, Warning for Sensitive Material in Chapter Five, Warning for Sensitive Material in Chapter Four, Zarkon As a Minor Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-19 17:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13709505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keep_swinging/pseuds/keep_swinging
Summary: A rescue mission on a Galran ship goes awry when four out of the five Paladins of Voltron get captured by the Galra. Imprisoned with no way out and Haggar looming in the shadows, the four will have to rely on each other to survive as long as they can. Things take a turn however, when the Galran assigned to guard them turns out to not be a Galran at all./ AU where Keith is human, yet apart of the Galra Empire.Or;AU where Keith is the Galran assigned to watch over the Paladins of Voltron. He finds himself questioning his morals about his origins, the Galra Empire, his father and if he was ever truly on the right side of this war.





	1. The Galran

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So when I said I had other ideas for VLD, I totally meant one-shots but this came out instead?  
> I'm really happy to be sharing this with you guys because I don't write too many multi-chaps these days so for me, just getting this out here is the best thing. :)  
> This is a darker fic at times and there is plenty of violence and blood to go around as the story progresses, so keep an eye out for warnings at the tops of some chapters. Any and all relationships between Keith and the Paladins in this story are purely platonic.
> 
> Any type of support or feedback in bookmarks, kudos or comments would be extremely appreciated! Updates should hopefully be semi-frequent and as always, comments make my day. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the first chapter!
> 
> Other Notes:  
> This is supposed to take place sometime way Post-S4, and the upcoming S5, but there are no mentions of Lotor or Matt in this, so it could take place during any of the seasons. Everything is the same timeline-wise, the only thing that has changed is that Keith is Galra.  
> Lion Lineup: Shiro - Black Lion, Lance - Red Lion, Allura - Blue Lion, Pidge - Green Lion, Hunk - Yellow Lion  
> Though Lance is piloting the Red Lion in this fic, he still has blue armor just because I feel like it'd be too confusing to have him be in red armor because of the show's original lineup.

**Torment**

.

you're no angel  
you're no angel  
and no heaven would want you now

* * *

**Chapter I: The Galran**

.

.

.

Zarkon wants them kept in separate cells.

"His orders!" The lieutenant in charge of Keith's sector barks, and no one questions his orders. Keith's assigned as their guard. Security is going to be amped up for the first few weeks—someone will be looking for them—and then, if nothing happens or anything's attempted, it'll be lessened as time goes on. Then it'll just be Keith and a hallway full of what are supposed to be the world's saviors.

Funny how that turned out.

They aren't allowed to die. They sent their Lions away before capture, and Zarkon needs those lions, needs the information stored in their heads—they aren't allowed to die. Unless he has a change of heart.

This is the biggest honor Keith's ever had—guarding such high value targets. Guarding the Paladins of Voltron. They didn't succeed in nabbing all five, the Blue Lion escaped, but four was enough; four was enough because they had gotten Voltron's leader, and Voltron couldn't be formed without the leader.

Keith thinks that if his father was still around, he'd be proud.

He thinks he'd be proud of the medals on his chest, and the battle scars dotting his arms. No pain, no gain he used to say over the blade before Keith's throat, pulling it away and taking a few steps back. You'll get it soon hollered from his defensive stance, Keith breathing heavily but charging again anyway. Practice makes perfect, he'd whisper as he'd grab Keith's hand and pull him up from the ground, eyeing the new bruise on his elbow.

Keith thinks his father would be proud.

"Kogane!" Keith grits his teeth, whipping around, meeting the yellow eyes of one of his few superiors. He's pretty high in rank, and there's only about eight Galrans who bypass him. "The prisoners are boarding."

He glances at the blade Keith's polishing, and opens his mouth to say something else. Keith cuts him off before he can. "I'm coming," he replies firmly, pitch nearing a growl. He turns back to his blade before the alien can say anything else, and the Galran considers arguing with him just for the hell of it, but decides against it, stalking away instead.

Keith exhales, glaring at his pristine reflection from inside of the blade. This is no time for memories. It's time for him to show the Galra his worth, to show them he's just as strong as his father, if not more. It's time.

He stands, sliding his blade into the brown pouch attached to his hip, and slipping the gun strap over his shoulder.

It's time.

* * *

The barrel of his gun stays trained on the ground, and Keith's grip on it is loose. He knows they're going to try and escape, of course they're going to, but he's never liked guns. If they get anywhere near him or he gets anywhere near them, his knife will do the job well. Clean, too. Guns are far too messy. Keith doesn't like guns, normal guns, laser guns, he doesn't care they're all the same and he doesn't like them, but he's required to carry one, so he does.

Most of the time he keeps it hooked on his back, a weight holding him down, but today he's carrying the menace, and even now it's only for show.

Zarkon's there. His cape is bundled at his shoulders, armor shining bright, a half-smile formed over his lips. Keith's never seen him smile. The fact alone makes Keith stand up straighter as he enters the hectic hangar. Ships are flying in and out, and a good amount of Galran soldiers are talking loudly next to where Zarkon stands, all of them facing the empty spot of a particularly large docking bay.

There's millions of robot sentries stationed all around the room, and Keith's a little irked by their presence. He trusts his blade over their aim any day. When Keith makes it over to where the Galrans are standing, some lower their voices while others invite him in. He nods curtly at the few who welcome him with his name and glares at the ones who don't.

Only now that he's close enough does he see that Haggar's next to Zarkon and a shiver races down his spine. He's never liked that old hag. She's given him the creeps his entire life, and even now at the ripe age of eighteen, his paranoia still hasn't gone away.

Maybe it's because he knows that where Zarkon would hesitate, Haggar would not.

Zarkon notices his company first, leaning over and whispering something to his wife before calling Keith over with an even-toned voice. "Kogane." Keith approaches him proudly, and Zarkon barely spares a glance in his direction before returning his sight to the empty bay behind the human.

"You know your duty?"

"Yes. Sir." Even after all these years, Keith still has a problem with discipline and respecting elders. He doesn't like taking orders either, and having to tag  _sir_  after every single word? Yeah. Right.

"These are humans."

"Yes." Haggar's gaze feels like it's piercing through him and Keith stands even straighter.

"You will not be swayed by your own kind." He doesn't poise it as a question. Keith doesn't take it as one.

"I am Galra. No more, no less."

A huff escapes Haggar, but Zarkon doesn't react. "Vrepit Sa."

"Vrepit Sa." Keith repeats as he's dismissed, turning around and walking closer to the empty bay.

"Are you positive he won't be swayed?" Zarkon's gaze falls on the sole human walking among a sea of purple and he shakes his head.

"His father—"

"The boy is not his father." Haggar doesn't even look sorry about interrupting him and Zarkon allows it.

"If he dares to aid them in any way, we'll take care of it. I feel as if you have no trust in him, Haggar." She blinks as a large ship approaches the bay, the metal screeching and snapping as it locks into the empty dock.

"I don't." She answers simply, and the conversation ends.

Keith's sided by two superiors and all of the Galran soldiers who were previously chatting once the ship pulls in, and though the hold on his gun should tighten, it loosens instead. He knows what to expect, but also doesn't, as the ship doors slowly open with a loud hiss. The only human Keith's ever seen is his father, and he knows what they look like but not how they act, and if his impulsive actions were any hint, well then he'd be in for a treat with these four Paladins.

Keith surprised when he finally sees them, and a part of him scoffs at the sight.

These people? These people are the defenders of the universe?

"Move it!"

They're connected by orange energy cuffs around their wrists and ankles, and they've been organized by height, not color. The shortest of the bunch is the Green Paladin, and she leads them out with her head bowed, shoulders hunched in. She follows the Galran leading them obediently, and Keith wonders why she's so muted but then an unsettling thought hits him and he gulps inaudibly.

She's a . . . she.

From her looks she can't be older than fifteen, and something dark settles in Keith's chest. Zarkon said they couldn't die but he also hasn't given a limit on what could be done, and Keith finds himself doubting the system for a tick. Weren't women and children supposed to be excluded from war? Keith blinks and pushes the thought away. She wasn't a child if she was a Paladin of Voltron. She wasn't a child if she was out in space fighting intergalactic wars she should've known nothing about.

Next in line is the Yellow Paladin and he's a big guy, with beefy shoulders and a stomach the size of a boulder. There's an auburn bandana tied around his forehead, and he looks to be about seventeen. He's trudging along behind the Green Paladin with a look that's more fear than bravery. Keith's lips twitch. Good. They should be scared of the Galra.

The Blue Paladin's next, and he's talking—legitimately talking—to Keith's utter surprise. Some of the Galrans around Keith frown at the noise, and others look interested, whispers rippling through the crowd.

"Why's he talking?"

"Isn't he scared?"

"He's mine."

Keith chooses to stay silent, a primal part of him wondering when one of the Galrans next to him is going to pounce. They're like prey, the Paladins, prey that's chained up and defenseless, and the Galra don't have patience, don't hold back, don't think. His grip on the gun tightens, and he keeps an eye on the most suspicious-looking Galran, an older one with a fuzzy white beard and bushy eyebrows, towards the front of the crowd.

He's about five steps away from Keith, and he's closest to where the Green Paladin has stopped, and he's observing all of them with a look of pure disgust that's poorly hidden. Keith doesn't miss the way his fingers tic, or the way he's toying with the hook of the pistol holster attached to his thigh.

Directing his attention back to the Blue Paladin, Keith gives him a once over, but keeps half-an-eye on the older Galran within the crowd. He's lanky, with darker skin and short hair, and looks to be about a year younger than Keith but with none of the same composure. He ends up stopping in front of Keith, and Keith's too busy watching the elder to notice the Blue Paladin's gaze lock on him and then his jaw go slack from shock.

"You're—you're human?" From behind him the Black Paladin's stare also hones in on Keith and Keith doesn't move, all his muscles coiled tight. The older Galran he's been watching slips the pistol from his holster. "You're Galra?" The Blue Paladin sounds beyond bewildered, but then the Galran that was leading them walks over and slaps him in the back of the head, shutting him up.

A few Galrans next to Keith snicker.

The Black Paladin jostles his chains, "Don't touch him," he snarls, and Keith believes the bite behind his words isn't just for show. Keith believes that if those chains weren't holding him back, he'd rip them all to shreds with that metal arm.

The Black Paladin is obviously the leader, Keith can see it from the way he's holding himself, so similar to how his father did, and his left arm isn't human flesh but instead Galran metal. Keith has a feeling he was one of Haggar's experiments and is amazed he was even able to escape. He's got a streak of white in his hair and a pink scar stretched across the bridge of his nose and he stands bravely enough that it makes him look like he towers over the rest of his team, even though the Blue Paladin nearly matches him in height. He can't be older than twenty-five, from Keith's best guess.

And that's it. These four people are the Paladins of Voltron. Without all the bells and whistles, Keith thinks they look pretty lackluster. Why were they picked to protect the universe?

The Blue Paladin continues to stare at Keith as his eyes narrow more and more, and Keith scowls but doesn't meet his eyes.

Zarkon approaches then, Haggar steadfast at his side, and his vision sweeps over the four of them, an evil enthusiasm in his eyes. When Haggar sees the Black Paladin she strides over to him and runs a wrinkled hand down his metal arm. He jerks and glares down at her, but Keith can see the abrupt alarm cutting through him.

"Welcome back, Black Paladin." Haggar murmurs, voice scratchy and full of malicious delight. He stiffens but says nothing back and Keith frowns when he sees the older Galran move a clawed finger over the trigger, the gun muzzle aimed at the ground. When Zarkon finally speaks, the amount of pride in his voice is slightly staggering.

"Welcome, Paladins of Voltron." There's something nauseating hiding there when he says the last word, something that makes Keith's head spin. He doesn't know why he feels sick all of a sudden. "One of you is missing."

"You'll never get her," the Black Paladin answers gruffly, powerfully, "you'll never find her."

Zarkon chuckles, and it's such an odd sound coming from such an authoritative being. "Princess Allura has evaded my capture for ten thousand years. It seems her Paladins couldn't do the same." He pauses for a moment. The bout of silence drags on far too long for Keith. "If you tell me where the Castle of Lions is, I'll let you live."

All four of them stay soundless and Keith is amused at their defiance.

"You'll tell me soon," Zarkon declares, abundantly positive. He turns to Keith, a sneer decorating his features. "Get them out of my sight." Out of the corner of his eye Keith sees the older Galran hold up the pistol and Keith turns and raises his own gun, firing two shots that hit their target in quick succession. The older Galran falls to the ground with a loud thump, and the pistol slides across the floor and stops at Zarkon's feet.

He looks over at Keith and stares as the teenager lowers his gun and turns his attention back to the Paladins. "Let's go!" He demands, approaching the Black Paladin and shoving the nose of his gun painfully against his back. The Paladins are watching Keith with varying looks of confusion, from the Blue and Yellow Paladins, and understanding, mostly from the Black and Green Paladins. They don't start walking until Keith yells at them again.

" _Move_  it!" He pushes the barrel further into the Black Paladin's back, wedging it between his rib cage and tailbone, and he winces but it's enough to make the Green Paladin start walking.

"If anyone else wants to try and shoot our guests, I would advise against it. You two, get rid of that traitor's body." Two Galrans scramble at Zarkon's order, rushing over to the body. Zarkon turns to leave the room without another word, flipping around so violently that his cape smacks against the floor.

Haggar doesn't follow him, and Keith tries to ignore her scrutiny on his back as he directs the Paladins out of the hangar. Five other Galrans meet up with him in the hallway to help escort the prisoners, two on the right side, two on the left and one taking position next to Keith, conversing with him amicably. Keith listens, but his main attention is on the Paladins.

"He was really going to shoot them?" The Galran asks in disbelief, and Keith locks his jaw.

"He had his hand over the gun as soon as they were off the ship."

"An old one too. Maybe they picked off his kin in a fight?"

"Next left!" Keith calls out to the Green Paladin as they approach an intersection, and then to the Galran, "Maybe." The Galran senses that Keith doesn't really want to talk, not that the kid ever does, but respects it and throws one last comment over his shoulder before taking the lead.

"Nice shot, Kogane. Zarkon's got you in his sights now."

Keith feels pride swell in his chest. About time.

They march down the maze of hallways for five minutes, and the Galran leading goes the back way to the cells because it's a harder route for the Paladins to remember and when they finally reach the hallway they're looking for Keith orders the other Galrans to remove the cuffs one at a time.

They start with Green, and she makes no noise as they tamper with the cuffs around her ankles, having a bit of trouble with removing them correctly, Keith watching her carefully the entire time. She makes no noise when the Galran fussing with the cuff hooked around her left wrist accidentally presses down too hard and leaves an angry red mark on her skin, and she makes no noise as another one thrusts her into the cell with enough force to throw her off balance.

She falls forwards towards the metallic flooring.

Keith hears a sharp crack as her nose collides with the unforgiving surface.

The other Paladins standing next to Keith hear it too, clear as day, and it's a chorus of fury before Keith can stop it. "What the  _fuck_  dude," Blue spits bitterly, followed by a muttered "Holy hell," from Yellow.

The Black Paladin looks furious. "Don't touch her."

A different Galran slams the door to Green's cell as the one who had pushed her moves onto Yellow's cuffs, pulling on them more than necessary out of spite. "What are any of you going to do about it? You're Galra property now. I can't wait until she's alo—"

"Enough." Keith interrupts, glowering at him. "That's enough."

Black's looking at him again and Keith nearly retorts a vicious  _what are you looking at_  but it's gone as soon as it came. Calm. He needs to be calm, collected and responsible so Zarkon knows what he's made of. So Zarkon knows he's the best of the goddamn best. He can do this.

Yellow mumbles something under his breath when the obnoxious Galran tugs harshly at his arm, and when the cuffs are off he does the same with Yellow, pushing him carelessly into the cell. Expecting the action, Yellow catches himself, but still looks aggravated as the door slams in his face.

His name's Zenak, and he's one of the more infuriating Galrans on the ship. He's also evil as anything, so that's a bonus. Of course he's been assigned as one of the guards to help Keith out. Just perfect.

Next up is the Blue Paladin and from the moment Zenak starts undoing his cuffs he's talking. He doesn't care if anyone's listening, he's just talking and talking and talking and when Zenak releases the final cuff from his right arm no one's expecting the right hook he lands to Zenak's face. Keith's stunned long enough that Blue's able to run halfway down the hallway, but then Keith's catching up and he tackles him to the ground, gun hanging from his back, knife hovering in front of his throat.

"That wasn't smart," Keith grumbles as he hoists him up, blade still pressed against skin.

Blue smirks and shrugs, though the movement hurts. "Worth a try."

He's easily a foot taller than Keith but that doesn't stop him from wrenching his hands behind his back and forcibly leading him back to his cell. "Not gonna try that again right?" Keith asks as he walks into the empty cell with him, and it's like a game with this guy for crying out loud. Zenak's cursing away and holding a hand to his cheek from outside the cell and Keith doesn't feel any remorse. He was an ass after all.

Blue seems happy at the fact that Zenak's mad. "No promises," he replies as Keith removes the blade and releases his arms, backing out of the cell slowly. The door closes after he exits which leaves the Black Paladin, four Galran guards and one swearing Zenak.

"Kogane," he growls, yellow eyes flashing, "let me at him." Keith shakes his head and can see the Blue Paladin perk up from inside his cage.

"After we're finished." Blue deflates and kicks at the wall. Zenak grins. Keith stares at Black as Zenak undoes his cuffs. "What are you going to try?" He inquires as the adult stares back at him. He stays silent until Zenak's done with his restraints, and Zenak keeps a grip on his human arm after the final shackle's gone.

"Anything I can."

Keith's reacting just as fast as Black's moving; his metal hand lights up bright purple and slices clean through Zenak's arm, and then Keith's drawing his blade and fighting him, right there in the hallway. Zenak's writhing on the floor, and the other guards assist him more than Keith because they know Keith can handle himself.

Blood's pooling on the ground, ugly red splattered against a dull grey, and Black attacks with the ferociously of someone not wanting to lose, every swipe going for something vital, even against Blue trying to shout reasoning from the background. "Shiro!" He calls, concern and terror all wrapped into one, "You can't kill him! He's a human working with the Galra! What if he's here against his will?"

"I'm here because I want to be here!" Keith grunts. He dodges what would've been a slice to his ear and slams the blunt of his sword against Black's—whose name is Shiro apparently—lower stomach. The blow winds him and Keith goes on the offensive, charging forward and slamming Shiro into the wall.

He's pinned for two ticks and then heaves Keith off him and slashes blindly, managing to cut Keith through the shirt, a long gaping line from the top of his chest to the middle. Pain sears his chest, and he can feel the blood running down his skin, and it just makes him livid as he charges again, purposely missing so that Shiro turns, and once he's turned Keith whips around and smashes the hilt of his weapon against the back of his head, knocking him out.

Blue stops shouting, and Keith exhales raggedly, placing his blade back in its holder and meeting the eyes of the Galran guards beside him. "Get him to medical and get me a blocker, before he wakes up preferably." Three guards pick up Zenak and start to tow him down the hallway, while the fourth hurries off in search of a blocker.

Keith hoists Shiro up all by his lonesome and drags him into his cell, dropping him in a heap on the floor, and then closing the cell door quietly. He can feel Blue staring as he investigates his wound and then when he can't take it any longer he turns and glares. "What?"

"You're on the wrong side of this war," he says quietly, and Keith scoffs.

"Says the one who lost."

Blue laughs. He actually laughs and Keith's glare deepens. "We didn't lose. We're going to get out of here." Keith doesn't answer, instead standing guard with his back against the wall and blood running down his chest because that's what his job is.

Keith Kogane is Galra, and nothing can change that.

Keith Kogane is Galra and nothing is going to change that.


	2. The Paladins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all of the support!  
> Hopefully Chapter Two holds up to everyone’s expectations!  
> Please feel free to leave a comment or kudos if you enjoy it! :)

**Torment**

.

* * *

  **Chapter II: The Paladins**

.

.

.

Keith’s relieved of duty an hour later and wastes another in the infirmary.

One of Keith’s superiors, Morok, takes over guarding the Paladins so Keith can rest in his own room for a while. Zenak’s all right. Keith’s looked at in a bed across from his, and it’s shocking to see a purple stump where his right arm should be. Shiro cut him straight through the bone, right above the elbow. Who knew the defenders of the universe were so bloodthirsty?

He’s scheduled to see Haggar later in the night, she’s the only one who could craft him another arm if it’s possible, and he rants to Keith about how the Paladins are going to pay for doing this to him and Keith just stays silent, nodding when necessary and throwing in noncommittal hums when he’s expected to. But then Zenak mentions the Green Paladin and what he’s going to do to her and . . . Keith bristles.

He doesn’t care.

(Correction: he _shouldn’t_ care.)

But similar to his thinking when he had first saw her, he knows the Galra better than humans, and the Galra hold none of the same rules as humans do which means that everything goes. Keith’s never had an issue with it, until now. So Keith decides that after he rests in his room for a few doboshes he’s heading right back to the Paladins so he can keep an eye on things.

He’s in charge of Zenak so if he tries something while Keith’s there, he can prevent it. If he tries something when Keith’s not around, there isn’t going to be a stop to it.

“Rest up Zenak,” Keith offers after he’s dismissed, heavy bandage covering his chest, a dull ache thrumming from somewhere inside.

Zenak nods his head and leans back against the pillow. “You as well, Kogane.”

Keith stands and heads for the door, “No rest for the wicked,” he replies breezily, and the words make Zenak smile and huff a laugh.

Walking hurts more than it should. Moving his arms? That’s a big fat no. Bending down to look under his bed for a clean shirt? Worse decision Keith’s ever made. It’s all for naught too, considering there’s nothing under his bed but a cardboard box.

“Shit,” he mumbles as he sits back up on his knees, cursing himself. He’s so stressed that he forgot he had cleaned his room a few days ago and that all of his clean shirts were now located in his closet over _there_ , where they were supposed to be.

With a painful groan Keith stands back up and hobbles over to his closet, jabbing a finger at the electronic pad beside it. The steel door slides open and reveals neatly stacked piles of shirts, pants and boxers. He plucks the closest shirt from the collection and turns to throw it on the bed. His chest objects, but it goes disregarded.

Keith’s room is a basic one; it only consists of a bed, a closet, an adjoining private bathroom and a desk with a radio placed on top. Besides his jacket, the radio is one of the only other things Keith has left of his father. A mirror hangs above his properly-made bed, and a dirty pair of pants is piled in the corner.

Stripping out of his armor and blood-soaked shirt, he sighs as he glances at his reflection in the small rectangular mirror above his bed.

He looks like hell.

His black hair is slick with sweat and there’s a line of blood dried underneath his chin. His dark eyes are clouded with exhaustion from the fight, from the tackle, and his lips are chapped. His chest is already an array of old scars and scabs, like a pirate’s map, but the white bandage covers the upper half, wrapped from front to back.

A new blue bruise is peeking out from the waistband of his pants, and his right forearm has some slight discoloring. But at least he didn’t lose a limb, and he’ll take a new scar and a couple of bruises over that any day. With a sigh he tugs the black tee over his shoulders and then crawls into bed, not even bothering to pull the blanket over him.

Sleep finds him faster than he thought it would.

* * *

“Why are we in space?”

His father looks down at him, the corner of his lips quirked upwards. “Because your mother is here.”

Eight-year-old Keith sighs as his father turns his sight back to the large window, drinking in the starless sky around them. Keith doesn’t understand why his dad enjoys space so much. There’s never any stars in the quadrant they’re in, and they never pass by any bright, beautiful planets so what’s fun about it?

Keith doesn’t like space as much as his father does.

“You mean, was, Dad. Mom _was_ here.”

Keith’s father recoils like he’s been shot on the inside, but on the outside he doesn’t show it. On the outside he blinks and watches one grey asteroid smash into another grey asteroid. “Was,” he agrees finally, and he wonders when his son started sounding so smart. So beyond his years.

“Mom was here, now she’s not, so why are we in space?” Keith sums up the question like it’s the easiest thing in the world to answer, and maybe it is for someone who isn’t him. But answering is much harder to him, because there’s so many answers that he couldn’t list them all.

Space is amazing.

There’s still so much to learn.

The Galra are extremely advanced with their technology and he wants to know why. He needs to figure out who Voltron is, and why the Galra fear him, or it, so much. Keith’s mother was born here, born Galra, and he doesn’t think he’s ready to leave yet, even if it’s already been eight years. It feels like the Galra is the only thing he has left of his wife. The Galra have a witch. Witches exist? Druids too, apparently. Magic. Zarkon’s power. How Keith looks so human even with Galra blood flowing through his veins. How close a ship can get to a star before it implodes from the heat? What—

“Dad.” Keith states when his father doesn’t answer, tapping a foot impatiently. When his dad looks back at him his eyes crinkle at the corners like they do when he’s happy, and Keith doesn’t know that it’s because he looks just like his mother in that moment. “So?” He pushes, wanting an answer.

Awaiting an answer for why he isn’t on Earth. From what he’s gathered from his father’s stories, Earth was grand, and Keith didn’t understand why he wasn’t there soaking up sun or splashing in puddles. Keith didn’t understand why he was floating along in space—in deep, dark space—instead of living in a house with a pet cat.

“Space,” his father muses with a faraway look in his eyes, “it’s endless, you know?”

“I know. You’ve told me that already.” His father smiles.

“It’s outstanding that we’re out here. I can’t even believe your mother and I were able to,” he stops himself short, reminding himself that Keith’s not old enough for the specifics yet. Though once he’s older, Keith’s father thinks he’ll be just as amazed as he is by the fact that he came out how he did, Galran blood and all.

He feels sad suddenly. She should be here. She was taken from him far too soon. The answer to his son’s question comes to him unexpectedly and he turns away from space to look at his whole world. “We’re in space because we’re Galra son, and space is where we belong.”

Keith’s eyes glow with the same fire his wife’s had.

He hopes he never sees that waver, or give out.

* * *

Keith awakes with a jolt, sitting upright. He feels for his blade, exhaling when he finds it’s still attached to his hip. It was his mother’s blade. His father gave it to him when he was at the ready age of ten, and he’s had it on him since then. He never leaves it in his room, never leaves a room without it.

He lost his mother, but he’s not losing her blade.

Keith’s father says the blade was a family heirloom, but it feels like it’s more than that. Keith doesn’t know for sure. He still hasn’t gotten a chance to investigate it. Once all of this Paladin nonsense is over, he decides he’ll explore the blade’s true origins. His eyes widen.

The Paladins! How long has he been asleep?

Muttering a curse under his breath, he quickly yanks his armor over his body. Keith was allowed to wear whatever he wanted because he was a human, and whatever he wanted almost always consisted of a tee-shirt and pants. The only thing he was required to wear was some armor overtop.

A chest piece, which looked similar to a bulletproof chest piece a police officer would wear back on Earth, except with purple adorning the edges, and then armor that rested overtop his pants, like knee guards that went from the bottom-half of his body to his shoes. That too had specks of purple dotted along the edges, and it didn’t look too bad so Keith didn’t mind listening to the rules about the armor.

His pants are black, and there’s a belt snug around his waist, and on that is his knife and a key ring. His gun’s tossed haphazardly next to the door, and Keith grabs it as he exits. He glances back at the red-and-white jacket staring back at him from the chair in front of his desk as the door closes.

It’s better to leave it.

He’s not sure he could get blood out of it, if something were to happen. He slips the strap over his shoulder and the gun swings from his back as he rushes down the hallway, making his way to the cells a few floors down.

When he gets there, Morok is waiting, but thankfully Zenak is nowhere to be seen. Morok hears Keith coming and turns to meet him with a straight face. “Kogane,” he addresses, and Keith hears some shuffling from the cells, “how are you feeling?”

“Better,” Keith replies, eyeing each cell to see if anything’s changed.

This section of cells is a fairly easy layout compared to some of the others, and this entire floor is nothing but prisoners and cells. The hallway the Paladins are in is hidden at the end of one of the halls so that it’s not easily accessible for any Galra wanting to give them a piece of their own mind, like the Galran Keith had shot.

Each side has a row of five cells, and there’s a dead-end after Green’s cell, so there’s only one way out. Everything’s made of durable metal, from the floors, to the walls, and the doors, and each cell is a five by ten room with no way out.

Every cell is identical; a thin cot in the far left corner that’s bare besides a lumpy mattress, a toilet and sink in the far right and nothing in the other two corners. A single blub hangs from the ceiling. Each door has a square window towards the top, steel roped grid-like through it, and then towards the middle of the door there’s a small rectangular hatch that’s big enough to fit a hand. Each door is protected by a lock, the classic lock-key combination, and Keith holds all the keys on a ring that’s looped onto his belt.

“Nothing happened while you were gone,” Morok says, after seeing the way Keith sizes up the cells. Keith directs his attention back to his superior. “The Black Paladin has a blocker around his metal arm, and the Green one got blood all over her cell.”

“I was here for the blocker,” Keith reminds and Morok nods his head.

“Ah. Sorry.”

The blockers were an invention by Haggar from a long time ago, all the way back when Keith was a young child, and all they were was a thick hunk of metal with some dark magic thrown in. If you placed it on whatever dark magic you were trying to counter, let it be a metal arm or something of the like, it would cancel it out completely, making the metal arm or something of the like completely useless and unusable until it was removed.

You couldn’t pry it off either; to do so you would need some hardcore tools that Shiro for sure didn’t have access too. “Nothing’s happening tonight.” More scuffling from the cells. “Haggar is coming down within the next few days, I don’t know what she has planned but it can’t be good.” Morok sighs, rubbing his eyes with a scarred hand. “I can’t believe we got the Paladins of Voltron, but not Voltron.”

“They’ll give in,” Keith responds, “they always do.”

Morok snorts in answer and then pushes himself off the wall, “You were gone for five hours. The night shift will be here in two and you know the rest?”

“Be back here by 0600.”

Keith was the head guard and in charge of everything, but he still needed rest. So, to put it in Earth times, he would be watching them from six in the morning to twelve at night, and after twelve he would switch out with the night shift. The night shift would contain any Galra soldiers who were assigned to it, their names pulled at random, but never below a certain rank to ensure that the Paladins couldn’t try any tricks.

“Vrepit Sa, Kogane.”

“Vrepit Sa, Commander.”

They salute each other as Morok leaves, and then Keith’s left alone with the defenders of the universe. “Kogane, huh?” He’s startled by the Blue Paladin’s voice to the left of him, and Keith turns to face him through the window.

All of them are stripped from their suits, instead tan, ratty prison garb covering their bodies. Their suits aren’t anywhere close by, and their helmets were disabled as soon as they were captured.

“Is that a first name or last?” Blue continues, undeterred by Keith’s lack of answer. “Come on, you can’t ignore me forever.”

“I think I can,” Keith mutters, leaning his back against the wall. His gun clatters, making Blue jump back from the unexpected racket. Keith smirks.

“Ha-ha. Very funny. You scared the guy locked up in a Galran prison cell.” He exhales as annoyingly as he can and taps his fingers on the door, switching between that and rapping his knuckles.

Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Rat-a-tat. 

“Will you _knock it off_?” Keith growls, slamming his hand against the cell door.

Blue grins. “ _Knock_ it off huh? Yeah, yeah sure.”

Keith gets ten ticks of silence.

Knock. Knock-knock-knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. 

“Are all of you this annoying?” Keith asks exasperatedly, before locking eyes with Blue. “Do it again and I’m coming in there to break your arm.” Blue cocks his head to the side, a sly smile sliding onto his features. Keith frowns. “Try me.” Blue opens his mouth to say something but is cut short by Yellow interjecting.

“Lance, stop it.”

The Blue Paladin, Lance, looks crestfallen that Yellow said his name.

“Nice going _Hunk_. Now the enemy knows my name!”

Yellow—Hunk—rolls his eyes from inside of his cell, though no one can see. Lance and Hunk start bickering through the wall, and then Keith remembers what Morok had said about Green’s cell. He pushes himself off the wall and makes his way over to Green’s cell, peeking in through the barbed window.

“Hey,” he says as he taps at the metal, “you okay in there?”

Morok wasn’t kidding when he’d said there was blood all over the cell. Blood was trailed from the entrance all the way to the sink, and then to the bed, where Green was currently laying. She’s laying on her left side, facing the wall.

She doesn’t move when Keith calls out to her.

Hunk and Lance simultaneously shut up when they hear the rattle of keys in Green’s door, and Keith’s not expecting Shiro to holler when he unlocks it. “Don’t hurt her!”

Keith scowls, “I’m not going to hurt her,” he calls back, voice deadpan, “just going to check out her nose.” Shiro stays quiet, and Keith hears a thump from his end of the hall. Keith enters the cell, leaving the door open a crack, making his way over to the cot. “Hey,” he says tersely, reaching out to touch her small shoulder, “I asked if you were—“

He blocks the fist that comes at him with fast reflexes and holds it in his own hand. Green’s angry face stares back at him, though there’s a hint of astonishment there too. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to catch her fist and he was supposed to end up with a black eye.

“Let go of me,” she hisses, loud enough that Lance and Hunk start clamoring from next door.

“Don’t touch her dude! Come break my arm for all I care but don’t fucking touch her!”

“Get out of her cell!”

Shiro doesn’t say anything and Keith wonders if he’s given up. Green fights against his grasp, struggling to get her arm free but it’s no use because Keith’s stronger and his grip doesn’t falter. “Stop struggling,” he mutters and he regrets the words as soon as he says them because they echo in his head and resonate through the cells and then the three other Paladins are going ballistic.

“Stop it!”

“Hey! Hey! Let her go!”

“Pidge!”

Pidge? Is that her name?

She has rounded glasses on her face that are stooped low on the bridge of her nose . . . which is clearly broken. It’s slightly crooked, and swollen, fresh blood still running from her nostrils and Keith debates whether he needs to reset it or not. He finally releases her fist and she yanks it back, glaring sourly at him. “Your nose needs to be reset.”

“No thanks,” she says, tone clipped.

Keith leans back, sighing. “I’m not—“

He groans in frustration.

“You obviously don’t know how to set it yourself and if you don’t let me do it now you’re going to be stuck with a crooked nose for the rest of your life. It’s already bad enough that it’s been like this for a few hours. You want that?”

The Green Paladin considers her options for a moment and then a defeated, “No,” comes out.

“Okay,” Keith says, ushering her into a sitting position. Her feet dangle from the edge, and he crouches down in front of her, holding both his hands up so she can see that they’re empty as to not spook her any more than he already has.

The less tense she is, the better things will go.

She glances at both of his hands and then nods and Keith lifts them to her nose, touching it as gently as he can. “Is Pidge your name?” Normal conversation will help too and Keith’s not a savage. Setting a nose hurts. He would know.

“Nickname.” Her voice is muffled but there and Keith’s lips lift into a barely-visible smile. “Is Kogane a nickname?”

Keith moves his hands to the right spots, “Last name. This is going to hurt.”

Pidge braces herself but when nothing happens she relaxes and that’s when Keith makes his move. She cries out when it’s done and Keith pulls his hands back, admiring his work. Her nose isn’t crooked anymore.

Upon hearing the uproar from her friends, Pidge calls out to them, calming them. “I’m fine guys. It’s okay. He just reset my nose.” Keith stands up and leaves the cell without another word, closing the door behind him, and then leaving the hallway.

When he returns a few doboshes later, he’s cradling food and water bottles in his arms. The best he could find for food were already wrapped peanut butter sandwiches in the lunchroom room, and so he had grabbed as many as he could carry.

(His father had taught the Galra some basic human meals and as it had turned out, they really enjoyed peanut butter.)

The only beings in the halls at this hour were the robot sentries, and they didn’t bother with him at all. He thinks it’s because of something in their programming. He slips two sandwiches and a water bottle into each slot, and when he reaches Pidge’s cell he gestures for her to come over to the door. She holds her hands out through the slot as he passes over the food and drink, but also a wet cloth.

“For your nose,” he clarifies when she looks back at him, and she takes it with a hushed thank you.

Keith leans against the sliver of wall between Hunk and Pidge’s cells, listening with half an ear to them munching and softly talking to each other through the walls, and all of the talking is mostly Lance to whoever’s listening, with Hunk replying here and there.

“Kogane,” Keith’s startled by Pidge’s voice, and he glances through the door to see her holding up her second uneaten sandwich between two fingers. “Can you pass this to Hunk?”

“Pass what to Hunk?” Hunk himself asks curiously, standing up and shambling over to the door.

“Uneaten sandwich,” Keith remarks as Pidge holds the sandwich through the slot.

“Uh-huh no way, Pidge. You only ate one sandwich?”

Pidge groans, “Yes I only ate one but—“

“Don’t you dare say you’re not hungry.” Hunk stage-whispers, and Pidge mutters something unintelligible. “I know for a fact you skipped out on dinner,” Hunk continues, “so there’s no way in hell that I’m eating your sandwich.”

Pidge is quiet for a moment. “Lance do you want my sandwich?”

“Well—“

“Lance no!” Hunk cries in disbelief, “Don’t you dare!”

“But she asked!”

Keith’s eyes flick over to Shiro’s cell then as he pipes up, voice stern. “Pidge,” he calls out, “eat.” With that Pidge pulls her arm back and unwraps her sandwich, taking a small bite out of the crust.

Keith says nothing.

Pidge finishes her second sandwich easily, which means she was lying about not being hungry and Keith’s tempted to go and snatch her a third but then he checks the time on his communication device and sees that it’s only five doboshes until midnight. No time. He hastily collects the trash from the Paladins and gets rid of it before taking his post next to Pidge’s cell.

Two doboshes.

“Why are you Galra?” It’s Pidge. She’s sitting next to her door, and the rim of her glasses catch the shine of the light above her. Keith doesn’t answer, instead changing the subject.

“Don’t fight Haggar. It’ll just be worse for you if you try.”

Pidge sighs, “Listen—“

“Sir,” A Galran solider says as he approaches Keith, clumsily waving his gun around. Keith pushes off the wall, glancing at the mass of soldiers, all ten of them all yawning and some grumbling amongst themselves.

He glances back at Pidge, and she’s got a look on her face like she’s calculating something, trying to figure something out. Lance stares at him from his own door, something unreadable in his eyes.

Keith offers no parting words to either party as he walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Other Notes:  
> So a 5x10 room is like the size of a small bathroom or a little bit bigger?  
> Just in case anyone was wondering.  
> Thank you for reading!


	3. The Broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!   
> Season Five was . . . interesting to say the least. I think it was great in how they sorta-progressed things and honestly the only thing I’m upset about is the lack of Keith and how they ended the season? But mostly the lack of Keith . . . I mean I know we got somewhere with stuff with him (trying to keep this spoiler free) but still I think he only had like twenty minutes total screen time. I don’t know if that’s actually true but that’s how it felt to me. 
> 
> Anyway, got a new chapter for you guys!   
> Thank you all for the support and drop a review with your thoughts below if you enjoyed . . . or . . . well I shouldn’t say ‘enjoyed’ . . . things get kinda intense so . . . feel free to share your thoughts in a review really . . . XD
> 
> Notes:   
> -Quick reminder that nothing that’s now happened in S5 is cannon in this story so just push all of that new information to the side while reading this.  
> -I don’t know if I said this yet but Keith’s father looks like how he did in that one flashback we got.

 

**Torment**

.

* * *

**Chapter III: The Broken**

.

.

.

His father’s tinkering with a clunky metal box when Keith finds him hidden away in one of the spare rooms of the ship, and he runs to him and tugs at a black pant leg, tears streaming down his cheeks. His father screws back in a bolt and then turns around in his chair, lifting little five-year-old Keith into his lap.

“What’s wrong?” He whispers, burying his nose into his son’s mane of hair, scanning his body for injuries. Keith’s blubbering in his lap, one tiny hand clutching the lapel of his jacket, the other clutching his calloused hand with a vice-like grip. “Hey, son. Hey.”

His soothing voice reaches Keith’s ears through the tears and he lifts his head, glassy eyes meeting with grey ones. His father smiles. “There’s my handsome boy.” Keith smiles, and his father squeezes his hand. In a soft tone, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Keith takes a few deep breaths, attempting to calm himself.

“T-T-They were ma—making fun of m-me.”

His dad’s eyebrows scrunch together, “Who?”

Keith shakes his head, more tears falling. “I’m not a-allowed to t-t-tell.”

When Keith was younger, he had a stuttering problem. All kids get it from time to time, and almost all of them grow out of it. Keith did, but sometimes it peeks through when he’s upset or too worked-up. “You’re allowed to tell your old man,” his father replies in a joking manner, trying to coax the words out of him. “Come on son. Who?”

It takes a few ticks, but then Keith gets the words out and his dad’s blood boils after hearing the names of the culprits. A few higher-ups, one general and one lieutenant, and some recruits who didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut. When his son lets go of him to roll up his shirt sleeve and show him a nasty looking bruise and some scrapes, his sight goes red. He’ll slash their—

Keith winces when his father runs a finger over the bruise, snapping him out of his violent trance. He murmurs an apology and then checks out the scrapes as Keith explains the story. “They were calling m-me names like half-blood and talking bad a-about Mom. Then they g-g-got up in my face and shoved me into the wall a few times. I-I couldn’t get away. I’m s-sorry, Dad.”

His father stops prodding at him, “What could you possibly be sorry for?”

Keith sniffles, “I couldn’t do anything.”

His father exhales and picks Keith up from under the armpits, hoisting him onto the desk in front of them. His hands rest over his legs, keeping him from falling forward. “They’re just jealous that you had such an amazing mother.” Keith beams at that, showing his pearly white teeth. “They’re just jealous that you’re more Galra and more badass than them.”

He reaches over for the metal box next to Keith and raises the antenna, clicking one of the many switches to turn it on. Static erupts from the device and Keith watches him fiddle with the buttons and dials, mesmerized.

“This is a radio,” his father says, “it’s something you can listen to. I’ve programmed it so that you could pick up sports games and music.” He turns the dial on the left all the way up, and then the dial on the right half-way. The static’s replaced by voices talking animatedly about tosses and speeds, and then it’s sprouting names like nobody’s business.

“Sports,” his father explains before twisting the dial on the right backwards, and the talking’s replaced by what Keith can only assume is singing.

“You'll be older too

And if you say the word

I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse

When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside.”

His father hums along with the words, tapping his foot to the beat. With a heavy heart he realizes this is the first time his son’s ever heard music and the feeling swallows him whole. His son’s learning the alphabet through him and not a teacher. His son’s learning numbers through him and not a calculator. His son’s floating along in space and not walking through flourishing fields of green.

“Don’t worry about them,” his dad calls over the feedback of the radio, dragging Keith’s attention to him. “I’ll take care of it. In the meantime . . . “ he says as he wraps his son up in his arms; “happy early birthday, kiddo.” Keith hugs his father back tightly, warmth blossoming in his chest.

“Thank you,” a short pause, “I love you.”

His father chuckles, kissing the top of his head.

“I love you too,” he says back, voice a deep rumble, and it reminds Keith of thunder even though he’s only seen lightning and heard thunder from far away, having yet to experience it himself. His father lifts Keith up with a playful grunt and then places him on the floor, his feet on top of his father’s combat boots.

He keeps hold of his son’s hands and then starts to sway, Keith giggling as they begin to dance around the room. His father starts to sing along, and Keith tries to copy but has more trouble because he doesn’t know the song, stumbling through the next verse and then finally going quiet just so he can listen to his father sing.

“Send me a postcard, drop me a line

Stating point of view

Indicate precisely what you mean to say

Yours sincerely, wasting away . . . ”

His voice is deep, soft with a slight twang, and Keith thinks he could be singer if he wanted to.

“Give me your answer, fill in a form

Mine for evermore

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four?”

The song ends, but then another begins, and it’s just them, space and the crackling of the radio.  

* * *

Keith’s awake at five sharp. He tossed and turned all night, for some odd reason, and couldn’t get comfortable worth a damn. He debates skipping his duty all together because he knows Haggar’s going to be there, and he hates that witch with a passion, but he’s also worried that Zenak might be there . . .

“Fuck,” he whispers as he rolls out of bed, cursing the whole way to the shower.

Nearly two and a half weeks have passed. Lance has been constantly annoying, Pidge has been standoffish as anything, Hunk doesn’t make any attempts to talk to him, and Shiro enjoys giving him the evil eye.

Haggar hasn’t been by yet, but he’s gotten solid information from Morok that the stupid witch is going to be by the cells today. He doesn’t know why he feels so anxious because of it. He’s killed people before. He’s mowed millions down, killed innocents, shot rouges—he’s done so much. But he’s never witnessed torture and he doesn’t know if he can listen to it, let alone watch it.

Could he get away with standing outside the cells while it happened? Haggar would have Druids with her; she wouldn’t need any more assistance. Right?

By the time he gets washed, combs his hair and throws on some clothes it’s less than fifteen doboshes to six, and he dreads the hour the closer it inches near. He mulls around his room for the rest of the time and then shimmies into his armor at five of.

Then his gun’s tossed over his shoulder and his blade’s snug at his side and he’s making his way down the many floors to the inmate level. His heart rate goes up and up the closer he gets, and he doesn’t know if he’s relieved or pissed at the fact that he’s there before Haggar is.

The guards from the night shift scurry out the way Keith came as soon as he comes into view, and some mutter good mornings as they pass by him. Lance is wide awake and leaning against his cell door when Keith makes his way over, and apparently the apprehensiveness is coming off of Keith in waves because it’s like the Blue Paladin can sense it once Keith’s in his radius.

Once the final Galran disappears from the hall, Lance voices his hello.

“Morning Kogane,” he chirps, “sleep well?”

“No.” Keith finds himself answering against his will as he makes his rounds. Shiro’s sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the floor with a frown carved on his lips, Hunk’s snoring soundly from his cot, and Pidge is asleep too, lithe body nearly curled into a ball against the wall.

He meets Lance through the window of the door, surprised to find a content smirk already settled on his lips. Keith crosses his arms. “How’d you sleep?” Lance chuckles, throwing his arms out.

“Like a baby, of course. Five star place right here. I got my own toilet, don’t have to share my bed with any of the ladies—”

Keith can’t help it. A scoff escapes him. Lance takes instant offense. “What’re you—“

“What ladies?” Keith interferes, watching as Lance’s mouth opens and closes as he struggles for a competent-sounding reply. “That’s what I thought,” he finishes when Lance doesn’t answer in time, and Keith turns away from him without another word. He leans against the wall and exhales, checking the time.

6:09 AM.

Haggar was late. There wasn’t much she could be doing at this early of an hour, so the fact worried him. Was she bringing a table full of torture tools with her? His stomach rolls at the very thought.

“I get _all_ of the ladies,” Lance says matter-of-factly after a few moments pause, and Keith rolls his eyes. “Voltron’s a big hit with them. Guys too.” Keith sighs. “You’re not too bad yourself, Mullet.” Then Keith’s eyes bulge out of his head because he doesn’t know how to react to that? Was the Blue Paladin really hitting on him? Seriously?

“Are you hitting on me?” He asks incredulously.

Lance hesitates for a long tick. “Yes if it’s working?”

“It’s not.” Keith deadpans, and Lance surrenders.

“Fine, fine. It was worth a try. Even though you’re the enemy and all you aren’t—“

“Stop.”

Keith had to admit, it took a lot of guts to hit on the Galran guarding your prison cell while you awaited certain torture. Somewhere within he finds a stupid respect for Lance but buries it away before he can dwell on it. “Kogane? That you?” Pidge queries with a yawn as Keith shifts in his spot.

“Why?”

“Just making sure those assholes were gone.”

Something cold attacks his insides and prickles his skin. “What happened?” His tone has a demanding edge to it, but it’s not towards Pidge.

“Nothing,” Lance says quickly, and Keith tilts his head towards his cell. The skinny Paladin’s heading towards the sink to splash some water on his face.

“They were just really . . . mean.” Pidge finally says, at lack of a better word to describe the things that had took place that night. She takes off her glasses so she can rub at her eyes. An _I’m sorry_ forms in Keith’s throat but he shoves it back down before it can come out.

Why would he be sorry? They’re here because they won’t give up the Lions, and if they would just give up the Lions their lives would be so much easier. If they gave up the Lions, they might’ve been able to survive this.

Then his over-sensitive ears pick up the sounds of walking heading towards them, and a rock appears in his stomach. A lump blocks his throat. Haggar. He tries to say something to the Paladins. Some words of comfort? Don’t egg her on? Don’t do anything rash? Just answer the questions and you won’t get hurt?

In the end nothing comes out and Haggar approaches Keith with a disapproving stare. She’s never liked him, but Zarkon did so that meant she had to deal with him. She didn’t like his father either. Maybe she’s the reason his mother is dead.

“High Priestess,” Keith greets coldly when her stare becomes piercing.

She’s flanked by three Druids and Keith already has a bad feeling about all of this. She stares at him for a moment more before gazing at each of the cells and Keith nearly curses out loud at the sight of Lance nearly sticking his head out the door to see what’s going on.

Haggar sees it too, sees him, and her target is chosen.

Keith’s stomach drops to his knees as she moves towards his cell with ease, and Keith jumps when one of the Druid’s cloaks brushes against his side. Then Haggar is holding out her hand and saying his name and numbly he realizes he needs to unlock the door. He’s the only one with a set of keys.

Wordlessly he treads over and unlocks the door, the sound reverberating as the door creaks open. Lance backs up but stands his ground as they all enter and even manages to keep an award-winning smile on his face the whole time. Keith hovers in the doorway as Haggar makes her way towards Lance, and then Keith takes a step back.

The witch’s head snaps towards him. “Come,” she instructs, waving him over with a small motion of her hand. Lance’s eyes follow Keith the entire time and before long Keith’s standing beside Haggar. “The Blue Paladin of Voltron,” Haggar acknowledges, giving him a quick once-over, “otherwise known as the sharpshooter.” Lance’s shoulders stiffen but he plays it off.

“That’s me. Want me to give some of your bots lessons?”

Haggar’s lips thin into a line. “The outsider.”

Lance chuckles, keeping his façade alive. Keith sees a fire in his eyes and unconsciously he rests a hand on his blade. “I’m really more of an insider, but it’s cool, at least you got the sharpshooter part right—“

“The most worthless member of Voltron.” Lance’s smile drops, but he stays collected.

“C’mon, now you’re just breaking my heart,” he tries, albeit a little weakly.

“What do they really need you for, Blue Paladin? Your pathetic humor?”

“Well I would like to think it’s more of my quick wit—“

“You’re nothing. You’re nothing to them.”

“Don’t listen to her Lance!” Hunk cries, face pressed against the wall, voice coming out slightly muffled; “You keep the team together!” Haggar flicks her head towards Hunk cell, and one of the Druids snatches the key ring from Keith before he can react. The masked menace heads out the door and another follows, and then Hunk’s exclamations are silenced.

Lance’s eyes widen fearfully, “Hey, what did you do to him?” When Haggar doesn’t answer Lance grows more agitated and takes a step towards her, smooth persona gone. “Leave him alone! He didn’t do anything!”

“Where is the Castle of Lions?”

Lance shakes his head, “I’ll _never_ tell you.”

“Where are the Lions hidden?”

“Maybe at the Castle of Lions?” He suggests sarcastically and part of Keith screams.

_You idiot_.

Haggar’s lips curl downwards. “Grab him.”

When the Druid doesn’t move Keith realizes she’s talking to him. She doesn’t expect him to hold Lance while she tortures him, right? God no. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. “Why?” He questions as flatly as he can, as to not show any of the terror he’s currently feeling.

“Grab. Him.” The witch repeats, playing no games.

Lance backs up when Keith starts to move, and then his back hits the wall and he has nowhere to go. Keith’s face is a few inches away from his as he reaches for his arms and as quietly as Lance can he begs, and no, Lance isn’t proud of it, but he isn’t ready to be tortured.

“Kogane,” he whispers as one of Keith’s hands latch around his bicep, “Kogane please,” the other calloused hand gripping his left shoulder, “ _please_.”

Keith wrenches him from the wall.

Lance fights back the best he can but Keith’s stronger, of course the Galran’s stronger, of-fucking-course, and then the Blue Paladin finds his arms pulled behind his back painfully. Haggar raises a hand, and so does the loyal Druid beside her.

Keith breathes. Clears his mind. He should not have conflicting feelings about guarding the Paladins. His job is to guard them, make sure they stay alive, and nothing more. His job isn’t to be protective over them, or try to save them from pain. His job isn’t setting a broken nose or bickering with a fellow teenager. His job isn’t watching out for them.

His job is to guard them.

His job is to assist Haggar.

His job is to be loyal to the Galra Empire.

The same empire that raised him, built him from the ground up, taught him, sheltered him, helped him. The same empire that his mother yielded from and the same empire that his father dedicated his life to. His empire.

“Last chance, Paladin. Tell me where the Lions are.” Lance thrashes from under Keith’s grip, and there’s already bruises forming from where his thumbs are pressing too hard against dark skin.

“No.”

Their hands glow bright purple, and then there’s a purple hue surrounding Lance. It brushes lightly against Keith’s body, there but not, and the feeling tingles. Haggar murmurs something in another language under her breath, and then Lance is screaming.

It’s not him fighting Keith but his body, jerking and pulling, and when he almost gets free Keith pulls him closer to him, holding on tighter. Blood trails from an accidental wound made by a fingernail pushing too hard. Lance screams until his voice runs hoarse, and then when his voice runs hoarse he starts crying and the crying doesn’t stop.

Keith doesn’t know what Haggar’s doing to him, or how much it hurts, but whatever it is it’s working, and when the purple bubble vanishes from around Lance’s body he sags in Keith’s hold, Keith the only thing actually holding him upright. 

Haggar smiles. “Again.”

Lance shrieks this time when the pain starts up again. The sound is nearly deafening. 

Shiro sits in his cell with his head in his hands, palms pressed into his eyes.

Pidge curls into a ball and covers her ears with her hands.

Hunk sits mute in the Druid’s grip, magic swirling from their fingertips.

Keith holds him there.

* * *

Three hours.

Haggar tortures Lance for three hours with the same method; the same magic. She looks angry when she finally decides he’s had enough—angry because he hadn’t given anything up yet maybe?—and stomps out of the room, muttering something to the Druid that trails behind her. The two who had been camping out in Hunk’s cell leave as well, and the one who had stolen Keith’s keys slides them across the floor, figuring that Lance is in no shape to reach for them.

Keith waits until he can’t hear them anymore; the keys a few feet in front of him, Lance barely conscious and limp in his arms. He waits until he’s sure they’re gone and then he lowers Lance to the floor and moves to grab his keys.

But they aren’t there.

Confused for a second, Keith turns and sees the ring gripped loosely by Lance’s fingers and exhales slowly before walking back over and leaning down to grab them. When he attempts to pull them from Lance however, they don’t budge. His brows furrow in slight annoyance and he yanks at the keys again but Lance doesn’t relent.

“Let go,” Keith grits out, tugging harder and Lance smiles, showing bloody teeth.

Did Haggar attack something internal? Keith hopes not.

“Never,” Lance whispers, the same answer he had given Haggar for the past three hours. Then he chuckles. “Thanks for keeping me upright, Mullet,” he says and something ugly inside of Keith unfurls.

Keith is Galra. Keith just kept a Paladin of Voltron standing as he was put through unbearable torture and that previously mentioned Paladin of Voltron didn’t hate his fucking guts? Instead he was thanking him? This wasn’t right. He should hate him. All of the Paladins should hate him. He’s Galra. He’s Galra.

“Fuck,” Keith mutters, breath speeding up. “Fuck. Fuck!”

Why was he like this? Why was he feeling sympathy for these people? Why was he feeling like he should be doing something more? Why was he finding himself questioning his morals? His gaze finds Lance’s, “Let go!” He shouts, but it comes out more like a wheeze because all of a sudden Keith can’t _breathe_ and black dots swim in his vision. He pulls on the keys again and Lance—stupid, stubborn Lance—doesn’t let go.

And then everything blurs together as Keith slams his foot down on Lance’s hand, a sickening _crack_ echoing through the cell. Lance doesn’t scream but he does yell, and Keith distantly wonders if it’s because he doesn’t have enough of a voice left to scream. His vision tunnels as he swipes the keys from Lance’s hand—his fingers don’t even react and his palm spasms but doesn’t move from it’s spot—and then Keith’s locking the cell and running away.

His head’s pounding and his heart’s racing. He can’t see straight, and his stomach feels like it’s going to reveal it’s contents any minute. Thoughts spin in and out of his head, and a high pitched ringing blares in his ears. Bile crawls up his throat. Something else builds behind the scenes.

He runs into Morok in the hallway leading out and the Galran looks worried at Keith’s nauseated appearance, placing an uncertain hand on his shoulder. “Kogane?”

“I-I-I need to go, I need to—“

He pushes him gently towards the lift leading upstairs to his room and Keith nods his thanks, Morok heading towards the Paladins to keep watch.

Keith doesn’t make it to the elevator. He barely makes it to the bathroom beside it, and then his head’s ducked in a toilet. Nothing comes out because he hasn’t eaten yet, but the acid from the bile burns his throat as he closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against his clammy arm.

He doesn’t know if he’s sick from witnessing Lance’s torture or if he’s sick from the fact that he just broke his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Used: When I’m Sixty-Four by the Beatles


	4. The Torture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all of the support with last chapter!  
> So this is kinda a dialogue heavy chapter. Sorry about that. It's all necessary though, you'll see.
> 
> Notes:  
> -I realize we're in space and that the Galra are an alien race but for the sake of keeping things simple, their bathrooms are just going to be our boring human bathrooms and they're going to have boring human parts. Cool? Cool.  
> \- Floated is a term coined from The 100.  
> -Warning for sensitive material this chapter. Please proceed with caution.

  **Torment**

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* * *

**Chapter IV: The Torture**

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Returning to his post is easier said than done.

Morok is one of the more understanding commanders, so Keith knows he can take as long as he needs to recover, but the longer he sits in the bathroom stall pondering all of his questionable choices in the past twenty-four hours, the longer Lance is left alone and without medical attention.

Wait, Keith thinks. No. No, Lance doesn't need medical attention. He has a broken hand. Not a broken rib. Keith isn't their mother. If anything he's just their glorified baby-sitter. He's supposed to be ruthless, all no mercy, let them suffer like his fellow Galrans. Lance deserves to suffer for being on the wrong side of the war. For being the enemy. If they would just give up their  _damn Lions_ —

"Did you hear?" Keith's startled from his thoughts by the sound of footsteps and hushed voices. He brings himself closer to the toilet, nearly hugging it, so as to not be seen from under the stall door.

"Hear what?" A second, grumpier voice answers as a sink turns on, while the other does their business in a urinal. Keith can only see one pair of legs from under the door because the sinks are directly in front of him, and he hopes the reflection of the stalls in the mirror doesn't give him away.

"Haggar's pissed."

"Kogane screw up already?"

The one in front of the sinks scoffs and Keith draws himself closer to the toilet out of instinct. "No, not yet." The second voice joins his friend by the sinks and leans back against one, crossing his arms and muttering a colorful curse.

"I can't wait for that half-bred to get floated. No human belongs in our ranks."

The sink shuts off. "You're out of luck with that. According to Morok and his brother Movar, Kogane's doing pretty damn well for having to guard the defenders of the universe."

Movar was another commander. Keith's never personally interacted with him but he's heard from some sources that he's a bit less . . . understanding than his younger brother. There was no bad blood between the brothers however and they looked nearly identical. Keith was always worried he'd inadvertently say something to Movar instead of Morok.

"Anyway," the first voice continues, "Haggar is mad because she doesn't think she's going to be able to get the Paladins to talk. So she's trying to plan things out with the Druids and is going to head back there soon to give them hell, I guess." There's a short stretch of silence before the second voice speaks up again.

"How do you get so much information so fast?"

Both pairs of legs start to head towards the door, and the first voice laughs at the question. "I'm friends with one of the Druids. Just so happens that he likes to gossip."

Keith's left alone again.

His heart's pounding again.

He is Galra. He just needs to remember that and everything will work itself out.

* * *

Everything would not work itself out.

Haggar's already back in Lance's cell by the time Keith returns, and from outside Keith can see the Blue Paladin twisting and writhing on the floor. His mouth's opened in a soundless scream. The entire hallway smells like burnt skin.

"Where are the Lions?" Haggar yells, her voice losing it's naturally calm tone, but it doesn't look like Lance can even talk in his current state.

Keith's frozen, a deer in headlights as he watches, and the Druids blocking the doorway don't even notice his presence but Haggar does, abruptly turning around and grinning like a cat that had just caught the canary.

"Kogane," she draws, "I'm so glad you're here. I'm having a bit of difficulty getting him to talk." Lance twitches and turns his head, spitting out a mouthful of blood, groaning softly as he curls himself into a ball, hiding his head. The Druids shuffle out of the doorway.

"I think I need to try another method," she continues, undeterred by Keith's lack of answer. She turns back to Lance, "Which one, Blue Paladin? Which one would make you talk?" Lance doesn't so much as flinch and Haggar chooses the verdict herself. "Grab the girl," she demands, not bothering to turn away from the distraught Paladin on the floor.

At the words Lance lifts his head, "N-No," he mumbles, the words barely audible.

Keith does as he's asked, marching over to Pidge's cell and unlocking it. She lifts her head when she hears him enter, and a flash of fear crosses her face. He makes his way over to her bed and grabs an arm, and Pidge shakes her head, her mouth forming the word 'no' but not actually saying it. He drags her out and into Lance's cell and presents her to Haggar who still doesn't look over at him and instead gestures for a Druid to come and hold her.

Uneasily, Keith passes her over, and the Druid keeps an iron grip on her shoulders, not bothering to move her arms behind her. Worry starts to creep into Keith's gut and he does his best to usher the feeling away.

"You broke his hand." Haggar guesses, but it's more of a statement than a question. Keith doesn't move, pinned halfway between Lance's trembling body and Pidge's terrified eyes.

"Yes," he confirms, "he went for the keys."

What's supposed to be a laugh but sounds more like a bark erupts from the witch's mouth and Keith cringes. "Bring out your knife. It's time the Blue Paladin understands that we aren't playing around." Keith gulps but again does as he's told. Is he going to torture Pidge? Lance?

Lance lifts himself into a sitting position, prison shirt riding up by accident from the movement, and Keith gets a glimpse at some new wounds over his stomach. Burns. So many of them, distorting and mangling the dark skin, from one side to the other, pink and red and  _black_ —burned to a crisp without a second thought.

His stomach rolls, revolts, refuses and Keith finds himself glad he wasn't there to witness that. Lance struggles with standing, it takes him a good amount of ticks, but then he does, the wall acting as his crutch as he attempts to make it closer to Pidge.

Keith's eyes flicker from Lance, to Haggar, and then to Pidge, and he can't figure out what the witch is up to. Lance makes it so, so close to Pidge, close enough that he can reach out a hand and touch her but as soon as his hand moves Haggar mumbles a spell and lifts her own hand.

Four purple walls raise from the ground and cage Lance in, a cage created by magic. His hand hits the wall and his mouth opens, to scream or to cry Keith isn't sure, as he slams a fist into it, again and again and again.

Violet shines from Haggar's hand as she keeps it outstretched to keep the walls up and then her head is turning to Keith and he can see every feature; the malevolent twist of her lips, the abhorrence for the Paladins blatant in her eyes, and oh God he can't do what she's going to ask him.

He can't torture someone. He can't, he can't, he—

"I like reaching into minds," she says ominously, "I'm not one for physical torture. It's too easy, too bland, for my taste. But I think Kogane wouldn't mind getting his hands dirty."

Pidge squirms but gets nowhere in the Druid's grasp.

"Kogane is more bloodthirsty than the rest of us."

Lance's panicked eyes slide to Keith.

"I've seen him on the battlefield. Cutting off heads, limbs, fingers—blood sprayed across his body, screams ringing around him—yet he keeps going until the battle's done. Until the Galra have won. Maybe he acts this way because he knows he's a human, or to impress the Emperor, but either way he's one of the best warriors we have." Lance slams the wall again, but it falls on deaf ears because all Keith can hear is Haggar's scratchy voice.

"One cut for every time he answers wrong," she finishes, eyeing his blade. "Deep enough to draw blood." Pidge whimpers as Keith turns towards her and slips the blade out of it's pouch. Can he even do this? He can't. There's no way.

_You're Galra_ , his brain chimes,  _you're unredeemable already. Why the hesitation?_

Keith's hands are sweaty on the hilt of his blade as Haggar looks to Lance and asks him a simple question to start. "Where's Princess Allura?" Lance glares and the look is absolutely lethal.

"Up your—"

"Kogane," Haggar snaps, "one cut. Let's start with the forearm, on the inside, towards the elbow."

_You're Galra_ , his brain repeats,  _you're evil, you're brutal, you are a solider._

The Druid pulls up Pidge's sleeve and flips her left arm over, revealing scar-less skin. No. He can't. He can't, no, no, no he's a solider he's not a torturer—

_Do it._

"Kogane?" Haggar questions at the same time, a bite to her words.

_You're Galra._

"Don't hurt her!" Lance howls, fists raw from slamming against the walls.

_You are irredeemable._

The Galran lifts the blade and slashes.

Or at least, that's what Keith's brain processes the action as. In reality, Keith brings the knife over to just below Pidge's elbow and presses it in gradually and when he pulls back there's a carefully crafted, thin line on the underside of her arm with a trickle of blood trailing from the bottom corner of it.

Haggar looks unimpressed and asks Lance another question. "Where is the Black Lion?"

"Torture me. Torture me! Just let her go!"

The witch chuckles, "You think you're in a position to be making demands?" Lance's mouth opens to answer but Pidge must be able to read his mind because the next thing Keith knows she's speaking, everyone's head swiveling towards her.

"Don't you dare," she orders, staring down Lance with a look that could kill. "I can take it, Lance," she says, so determinedly that Keith finds himself letting out a shaky exhale. "Trust me." Haggar seems to dislike Pidge's answer and mutters under her breath.

"Another cut, Kogane." Lance starts to freak out, pleading and hitting, but Pidge stays brave as Keith makes another carefully calculated cut. And another. And another.

It's like a dance. Questions leap, answers twirl, blood falls, cries bow. Over and over.

"Where is the Castle of Lions?"

"Narnia."

_Slash._

"Where is your Lion?"

"The wardrobe."

_Slash._

"How do you track our movements?"

"Not telling you that."

_Rip._

The tenth cut goes deeper than Keith wanted, and a swift river of blood starts to pour from Pidge's arm. She looks panicked, as she rightfully should, and the knife trembles in Keith's hand. Haggar takes the mistake with stride, probably thinking Keith did it on purpose.

"Are you willing to let her die?"

Keith's blood runs cold. No. They aren't allowed to die. Surely she's playing him. Lance hits the barrier and the expression plastered across his face tells Keith he's done following along, done allowing Pidge to get hurt. "Get it through your brain, witch, I'm not telling you anything! If you cut her one more fucking time I swear I'll—"

The blockade falls as Haggar lowers her hand.

Lance, though wounded, makes a beeline for Pidge. He's successful in grabbing Keith's elbow and shoving him backwards and he's just rounding on the Druid when Hunk's gruff scream shatters the silence. Lance freezes, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Pidge squeezes her eyes shut.

Shiro screams next, a terrible labored sound, and then Hunk again.

Haggar smirks. With an awful pain in his chest, Keith remembers about the other three Druids.

"Someone has to bleed for you, Paladin," Haggar whispers, "there's no escape."

Lance looks completely lost and utterly defeated.

"No," he mumbles, pulling at his hair, "no! Stop it!" He's hurting them, he's hurting them, he's hurting them all—" _Stop it_!"—he should just die, he should die, he should—

Lance's thoughts are cut short by Keith grabbing his shoulder, and his knife's sheathed but Lance still jerks away. Keith's resilient though and holds him there. Hunk and Shiro's screams are tearing at Lance's brain and he lifts his arms up to tug at his hair again, shaking it. "Stop hurting them!"

"No." Haggar declares, sturdy with her words, "You aren't in charge of this. I am. And you are going to suffer." She looks briefly at Keith, "Get him on the bed."

"H-High Priestess—"

He starts to stammer out in query but she's having none of it. "Get him on the bed!" She hollers, and then turns to the Druid that's holding Pidge, "Leave her and go get some rope and return with the others."

"Yes High Priestess," he replies, releasing Pidge and rushing out the door. Pidge backs up into the corner by the toilet under Haggar's threatening glower, holding a hand to her torn up and bloodied arm.

"Come on," Keith urges Lance, pulling him towards the bed.

Lance fights him, "No, no Kogane I'm not about to let you ra—"

"Move it, Lance! Don't make this harder on yourself!"

Lance stops fighting and allows himself to be walked over to the bed. Keith doesn't know what gives him away; if it's the slightly soft tone in which he says it, or the way he says it, or just the fact that he says it at all—but Haggar waits.

Haggar waits until Lance is laying on his back in the cot, one of Keith's hands over his outmost arm to keep him there. Haggar waits until the Druid comes back with the rope that was requested and proceeds to tie both of his wrists and both of his ankles to the frame of the bed (not without a fight of course; Lance battles Keith and the Druid the entire time). Haggar waits until her small Druid army surrounds the bed Lance is laying on.

Haggar waits until the very last second.

"Are you worried about him, Kogane?"

Keith tenses. "No."

Haggar hums, walking towards Lance and trailing a nail down his cheek. "Stab him," she remarks, backing up so Keith has room.

"What?"

"I said you were our best warrior. I never said that I trusted you." The Druids beside Keith move back too. "I'm afraid that these humans will sway you." Pidge eyes the unblocked door and then the keys on Keith's crooked belt. "You might have Galran blood, but you are more human than anything else. I think you've already stated caring for these pitiful Paladins, and I want to make sure you know your place."

"I don't care about—" Keith tries, but he's cut off by Haggar's stare. Holding in his resigned sigh Keith pulls out his knife, moving towards Lance. He can't read the expression on Lance's face, and it makes him mad that he can't figure out how Lance is feeling.

His knife hovers over his shoulder and he moves it so it's just the shoulder—no joints, no arteries that'll bleed, a clean straight-through gash, no issues—but then Haggar says, "I think the joint is a good place," and Keith almost says a profanity.

He rearranges his knife and is too busy focusing on his task to notice his keys being taken, and the other two are too invested in Keith to hear the quiet jingle they make on the ring as Pidge creeps towards the doorway.

The tip of the knife rests against the starchy fabric of Lance's prison wear, a tender pressure on the Cuban's skin. He's watching Keith warily and subconsciously Keith moves his body so that Lance's face is hidden from Haggar and the Druid's line of sight, and then braces himself as he starts to push the knife in.

"Hey," Lance says quietly beneath him, tone so low that Keith has to strain his ears to hear him. His eyes meet his and Lance's lips quirk upwards. "Put on a good show, Mullet."

Keith wavers but then Haggar is right next to him and without a second thought the knife plunges into Lance's skin. Keith keeps pushing until he hears another rip of skin, signaling the cut went all the way through, and Lance is screaming, screaming,  _screaming_ and then Keith places another hand on the handle, intending to pull it out—until Haggar rests one of her hands over top his.

"Good," she whispers, keeping Keith trapped there.

Meanwhile, outside in the otherwise noiseless hallway, Pidge struggles with the lock on Shiro's door as he encourages her from the inside. "Come on, Pidge," he murmurs, not unkindly, wincing from a sudden jolt of pain that emits from the cut located on his abdomen, "you can do it."

Three keys later and the door's still not unlocked, and there's twenty more keys in a line on the ring and she can't do it, she can't, there's no time—

"Shiro, I-I can't do it, there's too many keys!" She whisper-shouts, key ring shaking in her hands as she stares befuddled at all the choices. Shiro presses his face to the bars of the window, assessing the situation, and then pulls back and bends down, reaching his human hand out through the slot in the door. The only thing he can reach is her pant leg and he clutches it gently, holding tight.

"I'm here, Pidge," he whispers, and when he feels one of her hands touch the back of his he lets go of her pant leg and grabs her hand, squeezing it. "I'm right here." She squeezes back. "You can do this, okay? You are the smartest person I know. You can get us out of here, I know you can. Just breathe. I'm right here."

Her hand disappears and Shiro doesn't pull his arm back, instead letting it linger there for support, reachable in case she needs it. "Okay," she mumbles to herself, "okay. You can do this. You can do this." She scans the line of keys carefully and then realizes there's numbers engraved on them, and small words scribbled in Galran underneath. She was learning Altean and Galran, but it was a slow process and she didn't know all of the symbols yet . . .

"There's words. In Galran," she muses out loud to Shiro, who brushes his hand against her pant leg in a reassuring manner.

"You know Galran," he reminds her gently and she can't help it; she rolls her eyes at his Space Dad tone.

"Well yeah but not all of it." Shiro smiles, though Pidge can't see it.

"No," he says, "but you know enough."

It takes her a minute, but then she slowly starts assembling the symbols in her mind, associating them with letters.

C.

E.

L.

L.

Some type of number. She quickly grinds through each number backwards from ten because ten's the hardest to match. Not five. Not three. One. It's one. Cell Number One. Shiro's cell. Without a second thought she jams the key into the lock, but just as she's about to turn it, a clawed hand grabs the back of her shirt and yanks her backwards.

Keith knows there's too much pressure on the wound between the knife, both his hands and Haggar pushing everything down more. "Leave it," she orders. "I think the pain will help keep his mind more open." She removes her hand from Keith's and reluctantly he pulls his hands back, resting them at his sides.

Haggar's going to dig around his mind and try to find the Lions of Voltron that way, Keith realizes, and the thought is only solidified by one of Haggar's loyal Druids pushing Keith out the room and closing the door behind him. Through the window, Keith can see Haggar and the Druids surrounding Lance's body on the bed, and he turns away before he can see anymore.

The door only muffles Lance's screams, but they still bounce around Keith's mind.

He stands outside the door for a few ticks, trying to collect himself, allowing his hearing to go fuzzy and his mind to just drift. But then a different kind of yelling reaches him, and he turns his head to see Shiro's metal hand struggling to reach the key ring dropped a few inches in front of his door.

"Pidge!" He calls, determined and troubled and damn near hysterical, "Pidge I'm coming! I swear I'm coming  _just_ —"

He cuts himself off as he stretches some more, the tips of his metal fingers brushing the key ring but unable to get a grip on it.

"Goddamn it! Pidge! Just hold on!" Keith looks from Shiro's arm to Pidge's cell, and with a sick feeling in his stomach he sees that the door is wide open. "Pidge!" Shiro says again, a sob catching in his throat as his arm falls limp through the slot, her name a lost cry on his lips, "Oh God, Katie . . . "

It's enough to throw Keith into action. He bolts towards Pidge's cell, a newfound drive in his steps.

When he finally reaches the doorway, the sight before him makes his heart stop beating.


	5. The Vile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was a nasty little cliffhanger last chapter, wasn't it? Sorry about that guys; sometimes I just can't resist. XD Also sorry for the delay with this—things just kept popping up so me being able to write or edit anything had to be pushed to the back-burner.  
> Thank you guys for all of the support and comments would make my night!
> 
> Notes:  
> Warnings for language and non-explicit references to non-con.

  **Torment**

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* * *

**Chapter V: The Vile**

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When Keith was younger, maybe five or six, he had stumbled upon a male Galran pushing himself onto a female Galran in the darkened back end of a hallway. At the time he didn't know what it was; all it was were two bodies against each other and the wall.

He didn't pick up on the way the male was forcing himself on her, her cries hidden in his mouth, his clawed hands holding hers to the wall, her legs trapped between his thighs. Keith had seen it and then he had scurried away. He didn't mention it to his father until the next day during dinner, and his face had twisted into something dark and angry the more he pushed for details from his son, and then Keith never saw that male Galran around the ship ever again . . . which was odd, because he was one of the top-ranked generals on the ship.

When Keith was younger, he didn't understand.

As the years went by, he had thought about it more and more, until it had finally clicked. Then Keith had realized what had happened and what a cruel, sadistic thing it was, and vowed that if he was to ever stumble upon something like that happening ever again, he would stab the fucker right then and there and watch them bleed out on the goddamn floor.

He wasn't opposed to stabbing the fucker now, right then and there.

Except that his blade was currently skewered through Lance's shoulder.

In another room.

"Zenak!" Keith roars, storming into the cell and ripping him off of Pidge. He flies to the floor, brand new metal arm knocking into the ground with a clang and the rest of his body ensuing with a loud thud. Keith gives Pidge a quick once over, and thankfully finds no new marks, standing protectively in front of her bed.

He might be Galra, but he's not that fucking evil.

He'd never let that happen under his watch. Zenak laughs from the ground, lifting himself up with his arms and sitting on his knees while he looks up at Keith. Apparently he mistook Keith's tone and didn't realize he was fuming because his laughter stated otherwise.

"Kogane!" He says, grunting with effort as he stands up and gestures towards his new arm, "check out what the ol' witch hooked me up with!"

The mechanical arm is made from the same metal as Shiro's, just more bright and shiny and new, and it's nearly four times the size. It's bulky as anything, but Zenak moves it easily back and forth as he talks so it must have some sort of lightweight feature or spell. "Pretty nice, right? The girlie and I were just testing it out—"

Pidge recoils at his words, burrowing herself against the dirty wall. "I saw," Keith spits, rage coating his words, "what  _the fuck_  was that, Zenak?"

Zenak's careless grin falls. "What?"

"She's just a kid!" Keith shouts, fury coming off of him in waves, "I don't care if she's a Paladin of Voltron—she's a kid." He motions behind him, "She's probably no older than fucking fifteen and you were going to—"

He chokes on the words but trails off before Zenak can hear the crack in his voice. Zenak looks baffled and shakes his head, holding up his hands in surrender. "I know you're in charge of this whole thing and I don't want you to get in any trouble for anything that I do so . . . sorry. Won't happen again." Keith doesn't fully trust him, and in fact he just remembered that he has a gun on his back, so shooting him was still fully possible . . .

"Haggar's in with the Blue Paladin. Can you keep watch over the other two?" Keith rethinks his words, "From the _hallway_ ," he adds, causing Zenak to scoff amusingly.

"Yes sir," he replies, turning towards the entrance.

"Can you toss me my keys?" Keith yells once Zenak's out of sight, and few ticks later he returns with the key ring and throws it at Keith, who catches them with one hand and hooks them back on his belt, this time on the front where he can keep an eye on them at all times. Zenak lingers in the doorway as Keith glances over at Pidge awkwardly, unsure of how to handle something like this. "Yes Zenak?" The teenager asks when the alien doesn't move.

"I found her with the keys trying to get the Black Paladin out of his cell. Snagged her just in time."

Keith grunts, "She snatched the keys from my belt while I was busy with Haggar."

Zenak nods and then drums his claws on the door-frame. "Kogane."

Keith turns his head. "What?"

"You're right. She's a Paladin of Voltron. But she's no fucking kid."

Keith doesn't answer as Zenak takes his leave, and once he's gone Keith exhales and mutters a curse. He lowers to his knees next to Pidge's cot, leaning on his elbows against the coarse mattress. "Is it okay if I call you Katie?" Her small back's turned toward him, her chestnut-colored hair frizzy and wild above her hunched shoulders.

"No." She acknowledges, voice a meek whisper.

Keith nods. Lance isn't screaming anymore. It's most likely because Haggar is so deep in his mind that he doesn't have a voice in that moment. He can hear Shiro picking a fight with Zenak, and he hasn't heard from Hunk in a while so he hopes he's just knocked out; which is probably what had happened after the Druids were done with him. Some people can't take the Druids' magic, and if it's too overpowering it'll just make them sleep for a few hours.

"I'm no kid, Kogane," Pidge rasps, voice louder to get her point across.

Keith sighs and fidgets with his hands. "I . . . "

He pauses, at a loss of what to say. "When I came out of the cell . . . I saw and heard Shiro desperately trying to get to you. Then I came over to your cell and saw—"

Zenak on top of her, robotic arm pinning her arms above her head, other hand reaching for the hem of her shirt, legs pinned beneath him, foul face pressed up against the side of her neck—

"I got here before he kissed you, right? He didn't . . . get that far?"

Pidge is silent for two or three doboshes. Keith waits for her response patiently, not wanting to rush her. "No, he just—he just went for my—um, my—"

"Your neck?" Keith finishes quietly.

He sees her head move in a small nod.

"I know I'm Galra, and I know I'm the bad guy, but I'd never . . . I'd never do that. I'd never go that far and I promise that I'm going to do my best to make sure that never happens again. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something like that happened under my watch. You don't have to believe me and you can hate me all you want, but I just want you to know that I'm going to . . . I'm going to protect you . . . Katie."

He's expecting her to fight back. He's expecting a reaction for using her real name, but he doesn't get one. Instead Pidge slowly flips herself around, still keeping a sizable distance between herself and his arms on the bed, but facing him. The left side of her glasses is slightly bent inwards, pulling the wire frame in towards her eye.

"He do that?" He asks, tilting his head towards them.

Pidge nods.

"I can fix them," Keith proposes, and Pidge falters. It's long enough that Keith realizes the glasses are what the blade, or his jacket, or his radio, are to him. Something given from someone you love. Or loved. "I promise I'll give them back. I just don't want you getting hurt because they're bent like that."

A beat passes.

Pidge reaches up and carefully pulls the glasses from her face, passing them over to Keith. Keith smiles as he takes them from her and makes sure she can see his every movement as he inspects them and then gently bends them back into the right position. He hands them over to her and she puts them back on, pushing them up her nose.

"Thank you," she murmurs, and Keith opens his mouth to answer but then hears Haggar yelling from Lance's room and goes rigid. He glances from Pidge to the doorway.

"Get some rest." He tells her, slowly standing up. "I promise I'll—"

"You don't have to make a promise that you can't keep."

Keith pauses in the doorway and then turns back towards her, flicking at the key ring under his stomach. "I can keep this one." He leaves Pidge's cell and locks the door behind him, slipping the key off the ring and into his pants pocket.

By the time he turns towards the other cells, Haggar is leaving Lance's cell with her party of Druids following behind her. She pushes past Zenak's hulking frame and trudges away and Zenak shares a look with Keith while the Druids pass by him.

Once they're all gone Keith points towards the entry way of the hallway. "If anyone tries to come back, including Haggar herself, do not let them through. These Paladins have been tortured this entire day, enough is enough."

"Sure thing Kogane," Zenak returns, leaning back against the wall as Keith ducks into Lance's room.

Before him Lance lays in the same spot Keith had left him, wrists and ankles rubbed raw from the rope and dried blood stained on his clothes, along with fresh blood dripping from his shoulder and pooling on the mattress.

There's so much on the mattress that it's dripping from the side of that and falling to the floor. Keith makes his way over to the side of the bed, hands hovering above Lance because  _fuck_  where does he start? The rope? The wound? Well taking his knife out of the open wound would probably be a good starting point—

"Mullet?" Lance slurs and Keith's stomach drops because  _oh God_  he's still conscious? How in holy hell?

"I'm here," Keith mumbles, hands inching towards his blade. "you okay?"

Lance's lips slip into a half-smile and he winces as Keith's fingers wrap around the hilt of his blade. "As okay as I can be with a knife lodged in my shoulder," he drones, and his eyes slide closed. "Gonna leave one hell of a scar, right Mullet?" Lance asks, and Keith sighs.

"Yeah. One hell of a scar."

Lance chortles, but it's more of a breathless gasp. "The ladies will love it."

Keith shakes his head, beside himself. "I'm sure they will." Readjusting his hold on the blade to make sure it's tight enough, "This is going to hurt, Lance." He warns and Lance doesn't even have time to answer before Keith is pulling the knife free. Lance's body lifts from the mattress and Keith has to shove a hand at his shoulder to push him back to the bed.

"Stay down," he says as he yanks one final time, pulling the knife completely out.

"Fuck!" Lance hisses, automatically lifting a hand up to the gaping hole that's left behind in his shoulder. Keith stares at his knife, enthralled yet horrified all at once. The entire blade, from the sharp end to the handle, is covered by dark red blood, still slick against the surface and dripping from Lance's body. Keith's eyes flicker from the bloody knife to Lance's bloody shoulder and like a mantra Zarkon's words echo through his mind.

_They aren't supposed to die_.

"Hey," Keith says, and Lance opens his eyes, looking up at him. "I got to take you to medical. You've lost too much blood and you're still bleeding." Lance exhales through his mouth, but then that brings on a coughing fit, so without waiting for a reply Keith calls for Zenak.

"Yeah boss?" Zenak asks as he pops his head into the room, and then a low whistle escapes him when he sees the sheer amount of blood surrounding Keith and Lance.

"Call for reinforcements and then come help me. We have to get him to medical." Keith is already gently helping Lance into a sitting position when Zenak enters and starts to assist, and Lance stiffens at the other Galran's help but one stern look from Keith shuts him up.

Zenak leaves the room to call for support after he helps Keith with getting Lance to stand, leaving the two humans alone for a few moments.

"For such a skinny guy you're pretty damn heavy," Keith comments as he slings one of Lance's lanky arms around his shoulders, and a string of profanities slip from his mouth when the maneuver pulls at Lance's wound. "With me now, c'mon," he encourages as they start taking sluggish steps towards the door.

"For a Galran, you seem to care quite a damn lot." Lance counters, clenching his teeth together to hold back his cry of pain because of how much his shoulder is getting jostled even with Keith moving as gently as possible.

Keith rolls his eyes and bumps his shoulder on purpose, making Lance kick him in the shin in retaliation. "It's because I'm right aren't I?" Lance challenges, "Questioning your morals, Kogane?" Then, softer, "You can switch sides, y'know. Everybody deserves a second chance."

Keith doesn't retort. On the inside he thinks  _not me_  but he doesn't have time to dally on it because out of the corner of his eye he sees Lance's eyelids drooping as they make it to the doorway. Next he feels his body start to sag in his grip and he shakes him sensitively, glancing over at his face to make that he's still with him.

"Stay awake Lance," he mutters, "we're almost there, come on."

They meet up with Zenak in the hallway soon after, Lance drifting in-between consciousness and oblivion. "They're sending a unit to come guard the cells. We have orders to get him to the infirmary and then to return to our positions immediately." Zenak gets on the other side of Lance and drapes his uninjured arm around his body.

"Under whose orders?" Keith huffs as they make their way down the hallway, Shiro's eyes watching them heatedly as they pass by his cell.

"Movar."

"Fine." Keith growls and they make the rest of the trip in silence.

* * *

"I'm not helping a prisoner of war  _feel_ better." The doctor of the infirmary seethes as soon as Keith and Zenak lift Lance onto one of the empty beds and Keith flips around faster than anyone can register, shoving a finger in his face.

"Unless you want me to  _saw off_  your fucking arm with the same blade that gave  _him_ ," pointing towards Lance, "that injury, I suggest you do as I fucking say." The doctor is a younger Galran with a sloped nose and a thick white scar from his left eyebrow to the corner of his mouth, and beady yellow eyes. His nostrils flare at Keith's words.

"Why is it so—"

Keith takes a step towards him, and he looks intimidating from where he's standing, fists balled at his sides and fire burning in his eyes; the doctor takes a small step back. "Go ahead," Keith goads, "finish that fucking sentence."

Zenak watches from Lance's bedside as Keith and the doctor stare each other down, and then just as abruptly as the argument started, it was finished. The doctor stands down, pushing by Keith and joining Zenak at Lance's side. Keith goes to the empty side. He rests his hands on the mattress and leans on them, close enough to Lance's body that he can feel the warmth emitting from him. Lance's hand brushes against Keith's.

"Take his shirt off," the doctor commands, switching from thoughtlessly arrogant to unruffled medic in an instant. Zenak goes to do it but at the sight of his clawed hand heading towards his shirt Lance panics and shoves his body backwards.

"What the hell—" The alien starts, but Keith cuts him off, reaching over and easily slipping the material over Lance's head, leaving him bare-chested. The doctor goes straight for the shoulder gash, but Keith doesn't miss the way his sight lingers on the burn marks covering his stomach.

"I'm going to have to do surgery on his shoulder," the doctor affirms, glancing over at Keith, "anything else?"

Keith swallows the guilt swelling in his throat, "He's got a broken hand. The right one. Haggar dug around his mind earlier . . . and just the marks on his stomach."

The doctor shakes his head at the mention of Haggar, but his focus goes to Lance's hand. "I can't help anything mental." A beat of silence, "Let me get my tools." He turns away, talking urgently to two different nurses as he searches for what he needs and soon after Keith's being ushered away by nurses, Zenak too.

"Mullet," Lance says after Zenak's been rejected from the room, Keith struggling to stay just a while longer, fighting against the male nurse's firm grasp on his bicep.

"Give me a tick," Keith barks towards the nurse, causing him to let go and back off.

Lance's hand loosely grips his, just enough to keep him there. He doesn't bother to hide the scared tone in his voice. Keith allows his hold to stay there for three ticks before pulling his hand back. "You're leavin' me?" Lance croaks, and Keith doesn't lie.

"Yeah." A pause. "I have to." A second pause, deliberating his next words. "You're okay," he whispers, "and you're going to be okay too. I promise."

Lance's lips twitch, "Thanks Mullet. See you on the other side."

As he walks away, Pidge's voice is in his head, and so is his father's.

_Don't make promises you can't keep._

* * *

Keith cleans.

He dismisses Zenak as soon as he leaves the infirmary and then finds a broom closet. He grabs all of the essential cleaning supplies he needs, including a bucket and a sponge, and then heads back to the cells, heading directly to Lance's room.

He gets on his hands and knees and  _scrubs_.

He scrubs hard enough that not only does he clean up all of the blood from the floor but he gets rid of a lot of the grime too. The mattress is ruined. Blood's soaked through, splattered across it and down the sides. Keith removes it and finds another one hidden away in a spare closet and though it's a little dusty it's better than a bloodstained one.

Subconsciously, it's like he's making up for the torture; for letting it happen, for keeping him there, for breaking his hand. Hunk and Pidge are talking softly to each other through the wall as he cleans and cleans . . . and cleans.

After he's done, Lance's cell is spotless. It would be glittering with shiny stars if this was some cartoon.

"You hungry?"

He knocks on Pidge's cell door after he returns the cleaning supplies to their rightful place, and he's only slightly sweaty and slightly tired but mostly unfazed as he waits for Pidge's response. He gets a glimpse of her arm as she turns away from the wall, pausing her conversation with Hunk. The lines are already starting to scab over but nothing's still bleeding, so that's a good sign.

"Honestly? Not really." Then she raises her voice so that Hunk can hear her. "Hunk, you hungry?"

"Always," Hunk replies and Keith nods and makes his way to Shiro's cell next, rapping his knuckles on the door.

"Hey," he says, "you hungry?"

The leader of the group is laying on his back in bed, arms crossed behind his head and acting like a makeshift pillow. The scar on his nose is prominent thanks to the way he's lying. When he doesn't immediately answer, Keith taps the door again. "You hungry?" He asks again, louder.

Shiro lifts his head this time, and his stare is nearly blank but his eyes swirl with blame. "Can I ask you something?" He says, keeping his voice strong; though it's obvious he's the opposite. Keith nods.

Shiro's quiet for a few ticks.

"Can I see her?"


	6. The Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. I’m so sorry about the sudden two month disappearance! Sometimes I just take like, unplanned breaks from writing? I don’t even realize I’m doing it until it’s just happening and I don’t even mean for it to happen. Anyway—I’m back now and with a new chapter! Thank you everyone for the support so far and comments would make my night. :)  
> Enjoy!
> 
> Notes:  
> Aixisk is pronounced like Axis and works because AIX-ISK.   
> (Research has shown that almost all Galra names have two syllables so that’s what I’m going with in this story.)

**Torment**

.

* * *

**Chapter VI: The Choice**

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.

.

 

Keith’s caught off-guard by the question. A part of him instantly declares yes, but he propels that part down and buries it six feet under. And out of all of the things that could come out of his mouth, the most stupid reply of them all decides to rear it’s ugly head.

“What?”

Shiro pushes himself up and stands, making his way over to the door. He grips the tiny bars of the window with both hands, and Keith finds himself observing the metal arm more than the human one. “Pidge,” Shiro rasps, “can I see her?”

It’s like he’s a fish out of water. His mouth opens and closes uselessly, and his hands fumble with the key ring. Shiro must sense his uneasiness. “I won’t try to escape,” he says, “I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

And before Keith can put anymore thought into it, he’s unlocking the door. Shiro seems just as surprised but steps back and when the door swings open he holds up his hands.

“Come on,” Keith says from outside the door, and Shiro walks out. Keith follows behind him on the way to Pidge’s cell, one hand hovering over his knife pouch, but Shiro doesn’t make any attempts, keeping his hands raised.

“Just for a few doboshes,” Keith emphasizes as he unlocks Pidge’s cell, and her eyes are already filling up with tears from where she sits on the bed, “just for a few doboshes.” Shiro stays quiet until he door unlocks, and he’s pushing by Keith before it’s even fully open, making his way inside. Keith pulls the door shut with one hand and locks it at the same time Pidge leaps off the bed and runs into Shiro’s open arms.

Keith watches through the barred window as Pidge’s small arms latch around Shiro’s neck, and his hug her around the torso. She’s too tiny for him; his body nearly engulfs hers as he hugs her to his chest, and she’s openly sobbing, saying his name over and over. Shiro himself doesn’t shed any tears, but his eyes do get a glassy hue to them and the reunion reminds Keith of a family finding each other again after being apart for too long. Keith’s engrossed—he can’t get his feet to move in another direction.

The longer he watches the longer he feels the gaping hole he’s been stitching together over his heart split open, a longing for something similar embedding itself deep within him.

Shiro and Pidge stay in that hug for a while. Keith doesn’t know how long he stands and stares, immersed, and when the two Paladins finally pull back from each other Keith’s startled by the foreign movement. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Pidge blubbers, keeping a hold of Shiro’s arms, “h-he grabbed me and I c-couldn’t d-do anything.”

Shiro shakes his head, and his smile shows that if anything, he’s proud that she got as far as she did. “No Pidge,” Shiro whispers, leaning down and pulling her to him again in a fatherly hug, “you did everything you could. I’m so proud of you.” He mumbles some soft words to her ear that Keith can’t hear, and when they migrate to the bed, one on each end, sitting across from each other, Keith feels like he’s intruding and decides to check in on Hunk and maybe fetch all of them some food and water.

When he moves to Hunk’s cell, his face is pressed against the bars of the window, and Keith raises an eyebrow.

Hunk smiles sheepishly, “I was trying to see them and then I realized I really wouldn’t be able to, and now I’m just . . .chillin’.” Keith hasn’t had too many one-on-ones with Hunk, if any at all, so it’s like a breath of fresh air to talk to him—to talk to somebody different. Hunk’s expression sobers, “Hey so . . . Pidge is okay though, right?”

Keith nods, fingers drumming on the brass of his belt, “Yeah. She’s okay.” He doesn’t offer any more or any less and Hunk takes what he gets and pulls his face back from the window. Keith shifts from foot to foot, “You said you were hungry?”

The Yellow Paladin’s face lights up. “Definitely.”

“What would you like? Anything you want.” Hunk looks thoughtful for a second.

“They serve human food here? I mean I figured as much from the sandwiches, but I thought that was it. There’s more?” He looks impressed and curious all at once and Keith decides it’s alright to give him a bone to chew on. What could he possibly do with information about the Galra’s cooking habits anyway?

“My father taught them all of the basic meals. Eggs, bread and butter, cooked chicken, roasted meat, fried fish; you name it and he showed them how to do it. Zarkon really . . . liked . . . my dad so when Dad wanted to show them how to cook something he would give a list of ingredients and utensils he needed and Zarkon would send a fleet to some exotic black markets. They would return with everything—somehow, I didn’t even think black markets in space could have things from Earth of all places—and he would either show Zarkon or one of his trusted chefs how to cook it and,”

Keith pauses, a vague memory of his father with a white apron hanging low from his hips and a gooey spatula raised in one hand, the other out in a showman-esque motion coming to the forefront of his brain. “Bon appetite, my dear boy!” He would call when he was finished, Keith running up to grab his already-made plate, gravy or dressing or whatever kind of sauce nearly going overboard from the force of which Keith had grabbed his platter.

It always tasted incredible.

“Bon appetite.” Keith finishes, allowing the shadow of a smile to spread across his face. Hunk looks fascinated, but there’s a gentle smile on his face too. “You were close with your father?” He enquires while Keith scuffs his boot against the bottom of the door, leaving a white mark behind.

“Yeah.” He replies shortly, with a tone clipped enough that Hunk knows he’s crossing into dangerous territory. Hunk understands and backtracks effortlessly.

“Can I have a burger?” Keith thinks about it for a moment, cycling through the Galran chefs in his mind, trying to figure out which one would hook him up. He lands on a middle-aged Galran named Aixisk, whose one of the better cooks on the ship. “Like an all-American, no mystery meat I want actual _beef_ , burger? With cheese, lettuce and tomato?”

“I think so,” Keith says slowly.

“All right!” Hunk cheers, drawing out the letters. Keith goes to leave but then remembers about Shiro and Pidge and turns back to the excited Paladin. “Should I get them burgers too or—?”

Hunk laughs like it’s the funniest question he’s heard in a while, and then starts listing things about the other two Paladins. “Pidge doesn’t like meat but she loves chicken so if you could make her a wrap with lettuce she’d love it. She’s always trying to say she’s not hungry, but she always is and ends up eating half of my or Lance’s plate by the time she’s done. Shiro’s a picky eater, though he says otherwise, but he really is because I’ve made that guy five different kinds of toast before and he didn’t like _any_ of them, and his favorite thing to eat is cookie-dough ice-cream, but that’s not really a meal. He will eat steak if he’s starving or cereal so either of those works. Or a hoagie, or some popcorn, or cake, man he’s not that healthy of an eater is he—“

“I got it, Hunk,” Keith says as he waves a hand and turns away.

Hunk smiles after he’s gone, feeling accomplished. Feeling needed.

* * *

Keith returns with food that smells so good that all three Paladins jump up and rush the doors. He skips Hunk’s cell because his food is on the bottom of the pile he’s carrying, and when he gets to Pidge’s, Shiro is looking at all of the containers in amazement.

“You got all of that for us?” He asks as Keith passes Pidge two plastic-swathed chicken wraps through the open slot.

“I was feeling generous.”

The chicken wraps are followed by a black container containing a huge chunk of steak with seared edges, home-fried chips and finally five bottles of water that Keith had carried by shoving them into each one of his pockets. “Kogane,” Shiro says as he goes to turn away, “thank you.”

Keith can’t find his voice to answer and settles on a nod, and then he heads to where Hunk is patiently waiting. “Is it alright if I join you?” Keith questions after he hands over two well-done cheeseburgers and two more water bottles and holds up his own individually wrapped burger.

“Yeah man. Of course.” Hunk says through a mouthful of burger from his cot, and Keith unlocks and enters the cell. He goes to take a seat on the floor but is stopped by Hunk insisting he sits on the bed, and soon they’re both eating their meals in comfortable silence. 

Keith understands Hunk.

Just from the way he had listed what Pidge and Shiro would most enjoy. Hunk is their caretaker, their cook, their guy. He’s the light in a dark room; the man who will always be there, a huggable teddy bear who will protect his friends at all costs.

Keith understands Lance.

Lance is the team’s backbone. He keeps them all together, and his jokes and grins are there to hide how homesick he really is, but they’re also there to keep them balanced while they’re floating aimlessly through space. He’s Shiro’s right-hand man, everyone’s right-hand man.

Keith understands Pidge.

Pidge is loyal. She’s loyal to her family, loyal to her friends, and loyal to Voltron’s cause. She’s a genius, always finding backdoors and making sure there’s a second way out in case something goes wrong. She might be the youngest, and the smallest, but she’s nothing to be messed with.

Keith understands Shiro too.

Shiro is the leader. Shiro is the Dad of a misfit family. He’s in charge of keeping everyone on the right path, he’s in charge of making sure everyone’s taken care of. The well-being of his friends comes before the mission. He’s fighting a war that he thinks he’s on the right side of, evidently with a vengeance—his metal arm speaks volumes—devoted to being a Paladin and a leader.

Keith understands all of them, he thinks.

They’re a family.

The closest Keith’s ever had to a family was his father. He never got siblings, never got to spend a second with his mother, never got to have a family pet. He’s never had a full family, but he’s always been okay with having a family just consisting of him and his father. It’s wrong for him to admit that Voltron sounds like a better family than just him and his father.

“We’ve been here like three or four weeks, right?” Hunk asks through some toasted dough as Keith takes a small bite of his own burger.

“Almost. About two.”

“Damn.” A long pause. “Why are you Galra?”

Keith shrugs, “Because it’s what I am.”

Hunk takes Keith’s answer into account, but gives his own input on the subject as well. “Well let me tell you dude, you don’t act like Galra.” Keith can’t help but scoff.

“I act like Galra. I _am_ Galra.”

“Yeah but,” he takes a long swig of water, “you aren’t like them.”

“I held one of your friends in my arms and let him get tortured. I tortured Pidge.”

Hunk finishes off his first burger in muteness and doesn’t speak again until the second bite of his second burger. “I don’t think you wanted to do it.” He says quietly, shaking his head. “Kogane, you’re human at heart.”

Keith bristles at that. “I have Galran blood.”

“That doesn’t make you evil. You can have Galran blood and be the good guy.” Keith doesn’t answer. “Why did you torture them?” Hunk pushes, making Keith pause mid-way through his sandwich. “You could’ve talked them out of it.” When Keith still doesn’t answer Hunk waits a few doboshes for his words to sink in and then keeps pushing. “How do you—“

“I didn’t want to do it,” Keith finally says, ducking his head down and staring at his feet. “I’ve never tortured anybody before and I didn’t want to fucking do it but I couldn’t—“

His voice breaks and he goes silent.

Hunk glances over, watching him carefully. Keith places his burger on the bed and buries his face into his hands, trying to disappear. “It was horrible,” he mumbles, “I had to hold Lance as that fucking witch burned him from the inside out and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. Then Haggar,” he stops himself again, unable to continue because he hurt Pidge, he hurt Pidge, he _hurt her_ —

“You—“

“I didn’t have a choice!” Keith explodes, lifting his head and glaring daggers at Hunk. “I didn’t have a fucking choice. I can’t choose the enemy over my empire.” He shakes his head, directing his gaze to the wall behind the Yellow Paladin’s body. “I didn’t have a choice.” He repeats, and the outburst silences Hunk for a good chunk of time. Finally Hunk looks over and says six little words that have too much of an impact on Keith.

“You always have a choice, man.”

* * *

“Allura,” Coran says slowly from his spot towards the front of the deck, “I think I have a distress signal here.” Allura looks up, still thoroughly exhausted from Voltron’s last fight less than two hours ago, but ready to go again anyway.

“I’ll set a course right away. Where?” Coran looks back at her, confusion scribbled over his pale features.

“That’s the thing, Princess,” he says, “the distress signal is coming from a Galra ship.”

“What?” Allura says, eyebrows scrunching together, “That can’t be possible.”

Coran and Allura fuss over the information for a few doboshes before the Princess calls the Paladins to the bridge. They arrive quickly and look drained from the moment they get there, but they get there nonetheless.

“What’s the matter, Princess?” Shiro asks, always the gentleman, a strong edge to his tone.

Allura glances towards Coran and he looks worried but nods, telling her to go ahead. She turns towards the main console and brings up the distress signal, a little red blip on a big blue map, and the Paladins peer at it for a long moment.

Lance is the first one to put the pieces of the puzzle together. He rapidly shakes his head, a frown already tugging at his lips. “No. Nope. No way.”

“Is that,” Hunk muses as he squints, his eyes slowly widening as he figures it out, “a distress signal from a _Galra_ ship?”

Allura looks uneasy, “Yes. It is indeed.”

Pidge’s eyes narrow. “There’s no way a prisoner could get past Galra defenses and send out a signal. That’s impossible.” But then her expression morphs into something thoughtful and she finds herself backtracking. “Well,” she ponders, “it could be possible. If they got extremely lucky.”

Shiro stays silent, hand raised to his chin, eyes locked in an unwavering stare at the map. Coran clears his throat, grabbing everyone’s attention. “There’s also something else,” he states, albeit nervously. Without another word Allura swaps out the map for a recording and hits play. Shiro and Lance watch the ticks fall back from twenty-nine as the voice waves swim across the screen.

“— _someone_ please help me. Hello? Is anyone out there? I-I’ve been a prisoner of the Galra Empire for five years. I-I-I finally escaped and I need help.” It’s a man’s voice, definitely human, of middle-age or older from the sounds of it. His breathing is labored, and each word comes out like a wheeze. The Paladins listen raptly. Shiro crosses his arms as the message goes on.

“I can’t survive here any longer. I’m begging someone, _anyone_ , to please just help me. I don’t know how long I have until they figure out I’m gone an—“

His voice cuts out as he pulls his face back and tries to hide a low groan, and Pidge’s ears pick up shuffling in the background and then a hand slapping overtop of bare skin. “He’s injured,” Shiro mutters, Pidge nodding along.

“It sounds like he’s trying to clot it. A cut on his chest maybe?”

The man’s voice returns a few ticks later, and the ticks left on the message sink from ten to nine. “P-Please,” the man whispers, sniffling, voice choked on a strangled sob, “please help me. I’m hiding in the storage bay of cargo ship sixty-five somewhere in Everall, I think zone . . . twelve. Please find me before they do. _Please_.” The waves stop moving as the audio message hits zero.

Allura minimizes the recording. Lance looks at each of his team members and then stretches his arms, releasing a loud yawn. “Alright well that’s enough action for me today so I’m just gonna head to the kitchen and grab some space goo and then take one long-ass nap. Hunk, Coran, you in?” His cheeks flush as he clarifies, “Just for the goo, I meant. That nap part is just for me. Napping with me is a terror, according to my little sisters and brothers. I, uh, apparently hog the bed.”

Pidge and Hunk share a knowing look. Lance freezes mid arm stretch when he sees the same look pass between Shiro and Allura. “Wait.” He says, side-eyeing Coran who looks to be in agreement also, “No. No way. We’re not seriously considering this, are we?”

“It’s a distress signal, Lance,” Hunk tries to reason, “we can’t just ignore it.”

“Of course we can!” Lance fires back, throwing his hands up. “It’s coming from a Galra ship. Plenty of reason to stay the _f_ —“

“Language.”

“— _reak_ away!”

“Lance, man, c’mon. We’re Voltron. How would it look if Voltron choose to neglect a distress message? Not all Galra are bad, as we’ve seen with the Blade of the Marmora.”

“Well,” Allura interjects, “it’s not even just that. A human broadcasted that message. A human imprisoned by the Galra?”

“We shouldn’t even be considering this,” Lance mumbles from his spot next to Hunk, and the latter sighs heavily.

“Lance—“

“I’m sorry man but it is just too suspicious, and not to mention dangerous. If this guy could get out of his cell, past the Galran guards, robot sentries, other security measures and whatever else; why couldn’t he just steal a fighter ship and _go_?”

Coran seems swayed, “The lad does have a point. What if it’s a trap? We’ve never gotten a distress signal from a Galra ship, let alone one with a voice message attached.” Pidge weighs her options and then another thought strikes her.

“How could they even get their hands on something that could broadcast to us? Isn’t the only way to do something like that is to have Galran blood? We found out already that the only way to get into some systems or certain doors is with some type of Galra thing, like a bloodline if you’re Galra or Shiro’s arm because it was made by the Galra.”

“Thank you Pidge,” Lance chimes happily, thankful that someone at least sees why he doesn’t trust this whole thing for a goddamn second.

“It’s a human. Maybe they engineered something? If they’ve been there for five years they’ve had to have gotten their hands on something.” Lance shoots Hunk a glare for fighting him on the topic. But then Pidge and Coran switch sides again, and once again it’s five against one and Lance has to restrain himself from pulling out his hair.

“Are you all _insane_?” He exclaims, and it just so happens that Shiro picks that exact moment to intervene, settling the debate with a perfect leader-like answer.

“A distress signal is a distress signal. It’s coming from someone who has probably been through unspeakable horrors, and we need to take action and show the Galra that we aren’t afraid to step on their toes and help those we’ve let down. There’s also a good chance that he might have valuable information about the Galra that could help us win this war.” Looking around at everyone, Shiro sees looks of determination on their faces (not including Lance’s disagreeing frown) and smiles. “We’re going to help him.”

On the inside, Lance curses him out in his native tongue once he’s finished with his speech. Shiro then looks to Allura and she looks back, a soft smile etched on her own face. “Can you set a course for us, Princess?”

“Of course,” she replies and Lance groans loudly.

“You _are_ all insane,” he mutters a few doboshes later, dragging his hands down his face as the Castle of Lions descends into a wormhole.

* * *

“People change.”

Keith looks up from picking at his blade with a fingernail, eyebrows knitted together. Shiro doesn’t smile, but there’s something knowing in his expression. The Galran directs his gaze back down to his knife. “Not everybody does.”

He knows Shiro’s still watching him, can feel his intense gaze on the back of his neck, and it seems like it pins him in a corner of a boxing ring and he’s the boxer waiting for the final blow to the jaw.

“No,” Shiro agrees, “but people can change.”

“Only if they want to.” Lance’s blood still covers his knife. It’s dried now, dark red and rough to the touch, but Keith hasn’t had any time to properly wash it off. The fact that it’s Lance’s blood sickens him in a way.

“Do you want to?” Shiro suddenly asks, and then as if it isn’t already obvious; “Change?”

Keith doesn’t answer and puts his knife away. It’s been a few days since he had allowed Shiro into Pidge’s cell to hug her and cradle her like a lost daughter, and exactly two since he had last checked in on Lance in the infirmary.

He was recovering well, a real champion, the doctor had grumbled, but the only thing the words had made Keith think of was the area and all the innocents that had been put to death there because of Zarkon—because Zarkon wanted something interesting to watch, and what was more interesting than a fight to the death?

Keith and Shiro have been talking more, little bits here and there; an extra snack here, a memory there. Some days Keith worries he’s getting too close to Shiro. Other days he just doesn’t care. “There’s this old saying my mom used to tell me all the time.” Keith feels an icy pang shoot through his heart at the mention of the word, but brushes the feeling off.

“Oh yeah?” Keith says, lifting his head to glance over at the man.

Shiro nods, and there’s the tiniest shadow of a smile there. “There is no wrong time to do the right thing.” Keith feels something within him shatter—mend?—and he answers Shiro by bringing his gaze back down to his boots.

“My dad had a saying too.” Shiro watches him, one knee pulled up to his chest, the other stretched out across the bed, foot nearly knocking into Keith’s back as he waits patiently for Keith to continue. “Sometimes the right thing for you is the wrong thing for someone else.”

Shiro opens his mouth to say something, but before he can a force knocks him back against the wall, pinning his arms and binding his legs, and Keith’s standing up and whipping towards the door, knife at the ready.

“Sharing stories with a fellow human, Kogane?” Haggar laughs, but it holds no humor, only something disturbingly dark. “I knew I could never trust you.” Her eyes flare and before Keith knows what’s happening fire is rippling across his torso and his mouth is open in an unending scream.


	7. The Blade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looking back, I'm pretty sure nearly every chapter of this story has ended on a cliffhanger of some sorts and I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever grow out of cliffhangers since they've been a trademark of mine since forever?
> 
> Sorry for all of the line breaks in this chapter.  
> Also; the Paladins have good days and bad days. In the end they're a family, and they know they're strongest when they stick/band together and keep each other together.
> 
> Notes:  
> Warnings for some moments of heavy language this chapter.

  **Torment**

.

* * *

**Chapter VII: The Blade**

.

.

.

He's been going on missions his entire life; inside the ship when he was younger and on small Galra bases from ages six to nine. Three days after he turns ten, he is given his very first mission outside— _outside_ , outside—on some distant planet in the solar system. His father is ecstatic and Keith is too and his mission is nothing more than some simple recon, but when he returns home to his father with a glowing report and a courageous confidence burning in his eyes, his father is so proud that he scoops his scrawny body into his arms and spins him around the room.

Later that same night, they cook dinner together. They sing along to old songs playing through the radio, and Keith doesn't know any of them but his dad knows them all. By the time they're sitting down to eat in the empty mess hall, Keith's caught onto the chorus of one of the songs his father has been (according to him) guilty humming along to while he was setting their plates, and soon he's replacing the  _you're so vain_  lyrics with  _you're so old_ , and his father only takes minor offense as he pours himself a glass of wine and then a glass of water for his son. He turns down the volume on the radio so they can start eating and hear each other talk.

"I'm so proud of you, kiddo." Keith's father says through a sip of wine, cheeks scrunching up as he smiles against the rim. "I can't put into words how proud I am of you." Keith grins through a mouthful of grilled cheese.

"I really liked going out there," Keith answers, and his father doesn't miss the adventurous twinkle in his eye. On their dinner plates sit one grilled cheese sandwich each, both with crispy edges. The extra cheese is gooey and steam is still wafting from the sandwich as it sits on Keith's plate, and as his father takes a big fat bite out of his cheesy creation a burst of sharp static screeches from the radio sitting beside them on the table.

Keith looks confusedly at his dad but his smile just widens and Keith knows something is up. His father reaches over and turns up the radio, the knob clicking softly as it ups in volume.

"This next song is dedicated to one of our younger viewers out there. I'm glad some people know how to raise their kids on the right music. Congratulations on passing your," the radio spokesperson pauses, struggling to read the hastily scribbled card in his hands, "field test? Alright then. Congrats Keith Kogane—Jesus, ain't that a mouthful—from all of us at the station. Your father loves you, kid. Enjoy and rock on!"

"All I can say

Is that my life is pretty plain

I like watchin' the puddles gather rain."

Keith laughs in disbelief, and his face is painted with so much joy and appreciation that it makes his father grin wide. "I can't believe you—you were able to do this. I can't believe you did this. This is . . .  _amazing_ , Dad."

His father wipes his hands on a napkin and slowly pushes back his chair, standing. He raises the volume of the radio, and another thought strikes Keith. "Oh and field test? Really?" He asks playfully, raising from his chair.

Keith's father shrugs, "It was the best I could think of."

"So stay with me and I'll have it made,"

Keith's father holds up a hand when his son walks over to him, and the older man disappears through the backdoor of the room for a few ticks. When he returns he's holding something wrapped in crinkly brown paper with strings of twine holding it together. "Here," he says as he hands it over, "open it."

"And it rips my life away,

But it's a great escape."

"It was your mother's," his father whispers underneath the music as Keith tears the paper off and reveals a short blade with a glowing purple insignia between the blade and the hilt. The black grip is wrapped by some white bandage and the blade itself is polished so well that Keith can see his reflection within. "I—I know she would've wanted you to have it. She'd be so damn proud of you, son."

Keith looks up and clutches the blade tightly in his hand before jumping forwards and pulling his dad into a hug. "Thank you." His father hugs back, squeezing tight.

"I love you so much." Then his father pulls back and gently grabs the blade from Keith, reaching over and placing it on the table. "Now," he says, looking around the room, "I think some dancing is in order, don't you?"

"Dad—" Keith tries to protest, but it's no use.

His father is already moving around to the rhythm and he grabs his son's hand before he can hurry away. He pulls Keith along with him, forcing him to dance, and then once Keith does so his father starts to sing along to the lyrics.

"You don't like my point of view

You think that I'm insane

It's not sane . . . "

Keith slows his own dancing to watch his father and the old man's really moving, bopping his head and waving his arms around—just  _dancing_ , not caring who sees him. He glances at the blade resting on the table and then back at his father again. He doesn't have a Mom, but he doesn't think he needs a Mom.

Because Keith has his father, and that's enough. Keith has a father . . . and that's all he needs. His father laughs abruptly, bringing Keith out of his thoughts. "This is my favorite part," he calls over the music, all amped up, excited, and Keith feels a warmth in his chest as his father belts out the next words as loud as he possibly can.

"I just want someone to say to me,

I'll always be there when you wake.

You know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today

So stay with me and I'll have it made."

It's then that Keith decides that wherever his father is—that's where Keith's home is.

Because his father is his one and only home.

* * *

Keith's always hated Haggar with a burning passion.

Keith just never thought that passion would end up burning him alive.

The pain is nothing short of unbearable, and it's not stopping, it just keeps going and going even though it already feels like all the skin on his body has shriveled up and perished. Vaguely, he thinks he's writhing on the floor uncontrollably, but he's not sure. He also doesn't know if he's screaming or not; his mouth is open and it feels like sound is coming out, but he can't hear anything.

Suddenly, the fire stops and everything turns to ice.

The ice is worse. The ice is so,  _so_  much worse. The blood in his veins seems to seize at the feeling, stuttering to a complete stop because there's nowhere to go, and his heart is beating so fast Keith thinks a heart attack is possible. There's goosebumps covering every inch of his skin, and that prickling feeling just makes his charred skin hurt worse, and God just make it stop, make it  _stop_.

A voice breaks through the soundless bubble that seems to be surrounding him. The pain stops far too quickly and the abrupt burst of cool room temperature air makes him groan softly. His throat feels dry, pinpricks of pain still stabbing into him here and there, which meant that he was screaming after all. He swears his skin is still sizzling, swears that his insides are still frozen as he lays curled into a ball on the floor.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing you old bitch?" The sheer volume of the voice makes Keith wince, and he wants to move, but he can't and when a heavy hand falls on his shoulder he tries to move away but is unable to. "What the fuck did you do to him?" The voice demands, still at the same ear-shattering volume—or at least, it seems that way to Keith.

He struggles with realigning his senses and getting his act together. He can't just lay on the floor, admitting defeat, after he's come this far. He needs to stand up and go stab that stupid hag—

"He's finally shown his true colors." That's Haggar's voice, sharp and certain in Keith's over-sensitive ears. The hand that was on his shoulder runs over Keith's back, and Keith assumes the hand's looking for injuries, and then returns to his shoulder when it doesn't find any. He still can't get his limbs to function correctly enough so that he can stand up.

"What are you talking about?"

"I caught him talking to  _this_  Paladin. He was next to him on the bed, and they were talking about families and old sayings. Pathetic," Haggar spits, "human scum, they both are. I can't wait to reach into this one's mind," a chilling chuckle, "I've been waiting for the opportunity to do so for eighteen years."

"You aren't going to fucking touch him," the deep voice above Keith growls, and with a startling realization Keith realizes it's Zenak defending him. He would go as far to say that Zenak's protecting him too, but then he remembers what he tried to do to Pidge, and that thought fades.

"What did you just say to me?" The witch hisses, taken aback by Zenak's stanch tone of voice.

"I said you're going to have come back here with Emperor Zarkon by your side if you want to dig through his mind. Last time I checked, I serve him, not you."

Keith hears Haggar take a step forward and then Zenak's presence disappears from above him and there's the sounds of a skirmish. "How  _dare_  you," Haggar yells, and then somebody's choking and Keith remembers that Shiro's somewhere in here and he can't let anything happen to Shiro or Zenak for that matter, Zenak saved him but he needs more time because he still can't bring himself to move, Haggar must've paralyzed him or something because he should be able to move by now but he can't and he needs to move, he needs to move, he needs to—

When he feels Haggar's hand on the back of his neck Keith starts to really panic—he can't let her into his mind, he  _can't_ —one of her nails presses too far into his skin and the action scares Keith enough that he's finally able to move.

He jumps up, grabbing his blade from the floor beside him as he goes, and slashes blindly in Haggar's direction. The blade hits it's target as the witch lets out a painful screech, raising her hands to where her left eye should be, falling backwards.

Keith surveys the room and sees two Druids by the door, preoccupied and unable to assist their High Priestess without releasing their own subjects. One has Zenak hovering in the air, a shadow of what looks like a purple hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing the literal life out of him. The other has Shiro locked against the wall, his wrists and legs bound, tears falling from his eyes at some unknown pain, hoarse cries escaping his lips.

Pidge and Hunk are yelling from their cells, voices echoing. Keith's just about to move and attack the Druid holding Shiro hostage when Haggar locks in on him and removes one of the hands from her now bloody face. She lifts it in Keith's direction and mutters something.

A bolt of electricity that mimics the likes of a bolt of lightning shoots towards him and he deflects it with his blade, arcing it back towards where Haggar and her two Druid cronies are standing. The witch dodges it but the Druid holding Zenak isn't fast enough. It slams into him full force, knocking him back into the far wall, the entire room shaking as a large dent forms in the wall.

A guttural growl erupts from Haggar's throat, "Traitor!" Blood's dripping from her chin, staining the floor, staining her cloak, smearing the light purple of her skin. "You will pay!"

The hand that isn't holding her face flies forward and this time multiple torrents of lightning come towards him. Keith isn't sure he's fast enough to dodge, or reflect, them all. So he does both. He reflects the first bolt, rolls out of the way of the second, and curves the third towards the Druid who's so focused on causing Shiro pain that he's paying no mind to the fight going on centimeters away from him.

The Druid finds himself in a similar position as his friend and this one hits the wall with enough force that it cracks down the middle as his large body crashes into it. Shiro slumps against the bed. Zenak's slowly recovering from his ordeal but his butt is still firmly planted on the same spot on the floor where he had fallen when he was released from the chokehold.

Two more bolts come towards Keith and he dodges them by flipping out of the way.

Haggar screams. "I refuse to be made a mockery any longer!"

Everything goes black all at once for Keith and then he's gone.

* * *

There's so much blood.

Keith doesn't know where to put his hands, which wound to cover first.

There's so much blood.

It's his first boots on the ground mission on another planet, dirt beneath his feet and an army of angry aliens around him, and it's already gone so wrong.

He's so absorbed in trying to figure out what to do that he doesn't hear the war cry a green alien unleashes as he comes barreling towards him, sword raised high in the air above the three-eyed monster's head. The Galran below him groans and his head falls to the side, revealing more blood smeared below his neck.

He fumbles for Keith's hand and the teenager reaches over and clasps the clawed hand in his. It's hard to get the words to leave his throat. They stick like glue and move like syrup and it takes everything in him to push them out. "I'm here. You're okay. You're gonna be okay,"

The green alien is only a few feet away from Keith, revenge boiling in his eyes—what better way to avenge all of his fallen brethren than killing the Galra's one and only prized human?

The Galran laying below Keith is young—maybe only in his early twenties in human years if Keith had to guess—and his eyes are closed, breathing already shallow. He doesn't have anything defining on his face, no scars or blemishes, and he's the ideal Galran solider because of that. Purple, tall and murdering.

A part of Keith knows Zarkon handpicks his armies like that for a reason—if they're all the same, if they all look the same, he doesn't need separate graves. They don't mean anything to him unless they're winning. If they die before achieving their goal . . . what use are they to him?

The Galran coughs, blood spewing from his mouth, ribs rattling from underneath his skin, more blood discharging from . . . somewhere on his body. There's so much blood. "Ko—gane," he gets out, the name garbled and nothing more than a whisper sliding through his lips, "K-K—Kogane."

Keith knew him. His name was Garron, and he was always around, a gentle constant in Keith's life. Not every Galran hated Keith and Keith didn't hate every Galran. He always ruffled his hair whenever he passed by him in the hallway, and snuck him extra bits of food when the rations ran low.

He always messed up his mullet and Keith would silently fume as he tried to fix it, but Garron would just laugh, something playful in his eyes. Something good. "Stay on your toes, kid," he would call out, "you'll stop me next time." Keith was never able to stop him. His reflexes increased tremendously, but he could never catch Garron.

Now he was bleeding out in front of Keith, and Keith couldn't help him. He was too slow in killing the rebel that had gotten a stray shot at his back, and too slow in chopping off his head as he had fired a few more shots into Garron for good measure. He was too slow to save him.

"I'm right here," Keith replies, squeezing his hand. "I'm right here."

Garron coughs again. "K-Kid," he mumbles, "I n-need you to b-bury my knife."

"What?" Keith asks, utterly confused, "Why?"

Someone's shouting. Keith doesn't bother turning his head. "Why do you want me to bury your knife, Garron?" Garron shakes his head and more blood pools on the ground around them, Keith's heart pounding.

"Someday—it . . . it'll a-all make s-sense to y-you. Please. B—Bury it. Before they come."

The knife's next to Garron's head; so close yet so far. Keith drops Garron's hand and starts digging. The blade's buried within ten ticks. When Keith returns to Garron and takes his hand again, the Galran lets out a shaky exhale. "Thank you, kid," he mutters, "s-stay on your t-toes, alright?"

"Alright." Keith promises, and Garron smiles.

All it takes is a few more ticks, and then he's gone.

Just like Keith's mother. Everyone he ends up caring about—dead.

The sound of a sword slashing through skin reaches Keith's ears and he turns around in time to see his father plunge his sword through the green alien's chest, his own blade inches from Keith's neck. The alien's eyes go huge and then his body goes slack as his father pulls his sword back out and the creature collapses to the floor.

His father drops to his knees next to Keith and tugs him into a bone-crushing hug, sword laying forgotten on the ground. Very slowly, Keith's brain connects the facts. He was almost just as dead as Garron, but his father had gotten there in time. Keith's arms snake around his father's back, "Dad," he cries, and his father shushes him, pulling him closer.

"I know, son. I know. It's okay." He kisses the back of his hair, "It's okay."

As twelve year old Keith cries in his father's arms, overwhelmed by emotions he didn't even know he had, his father lifts his head and eyes the poorly hidden mound of dirt next to Garron's body. He says nothing about it to his son.

When he returns later and digs up the bank of dirt, he finds the fallen Galra's blade. He had guessed it was buried there, and the fact that he was right makes him mutter a curse. Buried by his son no less, and Keith's father scoffs. It was a good thing Garron was dead. The Galra had suspected him anyway. He stares at the blade for a moment, lost in thought.

Discovering that his wife had had a blade from the Blade of Marmora was troubling at first. But then he had told himself to stop dwelling on things he knew not to be true. She was one of the most devoted Galrans out there, serving her empire with the utmost respect and grace of a true Galran, and there was no way in hell that she would've ever worked with the Blade. It was probably just a prize of some sort, a souvenir from a Blade she had killed, and he would've threw it into the depths of space if it wasn't for her final words.

She had wanted Keith to have it, as soon as he was old enough to understand. Understand what, Keith's father wasn't sure, his wife hadn't been able to get that far, but she had made him promise that he would pass it down to him, and he wasn't going to deny the love of his life.

Before giving it to Keith, he made sure he would never be questioned about carrying it. He conversed with other higher-ups in the empire, and even went as far as talking to High Priestess Haggar about it. He knew she hated his guts, but Zarkon liked him and she had to act like she liked him for her emperor. The decision was unanimous and the Blade of Marmora has never been mentioned around, or to, Keith in his life.

Keith's father stares at the blade for a moment more before turning and stabbing it into Garron's stomach. The body's slowly decomposing, destined to become one with the dirt of this planet if left there, and he gazes down at it before standing, turning, and walking away.

He leaves Garron's body to rot there, where it belongs.

No one ever finds out that a lone solider never returned home.

* * *

Keith's never believed his knife was a family heirloom. Because Garron had a knife of his own that was always fastened to his hip, the blade a different design, the insignia identical.

* * *

"Easy there, Kogane."

Morok's at his side when Keith wakes up and immediately goes to move off the bed, overlooking the faint burning feeling in his torso and the headache throbbing in the depths of his mind. "I'm fine," Keith grumbles, pushing against the Galran hand on his shoulder. "I'm fine."

Morok would look amused if there wasn't already a permanent frown engraved on his face. "Haggar really did a number on you." He comments, releasing his shoulder when Keith shakes his loose hand off.

Keith doesn't make another attempt to move from the bed and settles with sitting on the edge, gaze directed at his shoes. "What happened?"

Morok sighs, crossing his arms. "By the time Movar and I arrived with a squad, the Black Paladin was fighting with Haggar. Somehow he was able to get the blocker off and was going after her with his arm, and I saw a lot of good attempts at making sure she wasn't going to be able to walk out of that room alive. Zenak was unconscious by the cot, but he's still in recovery so we don't quite know what happened to him, and you were . . . out."

Keith looks up at Morok, "Out?" He questions incredulously.

The Galran nods his head. "At first we didn't think you were breathing."

Keith glances down at himself, evaluating the damage. The bandage over his chest cut from when the Paladins had first gotten there has been replaced with a clean one, and there's a thick strip of white bandage wrapped around his abdomen area. Glancing over at the small table next to the infirmary bed reveals his blade that's sitting snugly in it's pouch and his wrinkled tee-shirt. His armor is piled on the floor next to the bed. "How long was I out for?"

Morok shrugs, "A few days, maybe?"

Keith bristles, "I need to get back—"

"You're staying right here."

"Morok I can't. I need to make sure the Paladins are okay and get back to my post."

Morok doesn't make any moves to stop him as Keith stands and tugs his shirt over his body, wincing when the material brushes against his stomach. "Your post is still going to be there after you heal." Keith stays silent as he hooks his blade's pouch onto his belt.

"I need to show Zarkon that I—"

"You need to show Zarkon what?" Morok asserts. "That you're trustworthy? That you aren't to be underestimated? That you're strong? You've already proven yourself, Kogane. You've proven yourself a hundred times over. That's how you got this position." Keith pulls on his armor in silence.

He doesn't answer until a few tense ticks later. "I need to make sure the Paladins are okay." He finally says, and his voice has a little too much care laced within it to be passable for a Galran. Either Morok doesn't notice or doesn't care.

"I don't think you're looking for Zarkon's approval, Kogane." He whispers, and there's something in his tone that Keith doesn't recognize. "I think you're looking for the Paladin's." A beat. "I think you don't want to be the bad guy anymore."

Keith's heart races and he opens his mouth to object but before he can someone else interrupts.

"Kogane."

Zarkon's voice is cold and calculated as he makes his way over to where Keith and Morok are standing. Based on his neutral facial expression, he didn't hear the two's previous conversation and Keith is secretly thankful. Though his brain is moving a mile a minute trying to figure out what Morok had meant. He wasn't sick of being the 'bad guy'. He was Galra. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Emperor Zarkon," Keith welcomes as Zarkon comes to a stop in front of them, Morok nodding his own greeting.

"Haggar says you're a traitor." Zarkon states brusquely. Keith sets his shoulders.

"I was talking with the Black Paladin, trying to trick him into giving me information by pretending to get close with him, and Haggar misunderstood the situation. She proceeded to attack me and you know the rest."

_Liar_ , his brain shouts,  _there were no tricks_.

Zarkon's quiet for a long moment. It feels like he's reading him, trying to figure him out, and Keith hopes his story holds up. Morok's eyes flicker from Keith to Zarkon, watching them both extremely carefully, ready to intervene if needed.

"You are to stay away from Haggar. She is to stay away from you. You are still in charge of guarding the Paladins and she is still in charge of breaking them. Your schedules will no longer interfere with each other. Is this understood, Kogane?" Keith spares a brief look at Morok, who offers no opinion on the matter.

"Yes sir," he says as he looks back at Zarkon and the Galran looks pleased.

"Good," he says as he turns away. "Oh and Kogane?" Zarkon says as he glances back at Keith over his shoulder.

"Yes sir?"

"Very good work with keeping the Paladins alive. You shouldn't have to deal with them for much longer."

The way he says the words stalls Keith's reply, and his second sentence sticks with him, taunting him, haunting him for what feels like the longest time. Had he made plans to kill them already? What was the timeline? A day? A week? A month? An hour?

Keith's heart starts to hammer, and each beat feels like a punch to the gut. "Thank you." Keith answers quietly, but Zarkon's already gone.

When he turns back to ask Morok a question, he's gone too.

* * *

Shiro's been fitted with a new blocker, and this one wraps around his neck like a dog collar. Keith's stomach rolls as soon as he sees it, and when the group of Paladins hear footsteps in the hall outside the cells they all move to their windows to see who it is. Lance is back in his cell and a sloppy grin is slapped across his lips once he sees the dark black of Keith's mullet. "Mullet! Welcome back."

Shiro sighs from his own cell, a reassured sort of sound. "I'm glad you're okay. Haggar tried to get to you but I held her back as long as I could." Hunk's next, and his stomach is growling so loudly that it echoes down the hall.

"It's great to have you back man," he pauses, seemingly considering his next words, "we've been starved the whole time you've been gone. You're the only one who takes care of us."

"Yeah all the others just scowl and glare the entire time," Lance chimes in, rolling his eyes. "Even I'm more mature than that."

Hunk chuckles, "Lance, I'm sorry my man but you're pretty immature at times."

"No I'm—why is it always you who betrays me first? My closest compadre the first to throw me under the bus!"

"Lance I'm not throwing you anywhere—"

"You just said I was immature!"

"I said immature  _at times_. There's a difference."

The two start bickering, Shiro only interrupting when their disputing gets too intense, and Keith's eyes finally land on Pidge. She's smiling. "You okay, Kogane?"

Keith exhales shakily. He's leaning against the far wall, where he can look into all four of the cell windows and see all four hopeful faces of the Paladins. Shiro is glaring lightheartedly at Lance for edging Hunk on, Lance is nearly screeching in Hunk's direction, Hunk can't stop rolling his eyes and Pidge's eyes go from her friends to Keith, soft chuckles escaping her when the Yellow Paladin one-ups the Blue Paladin.

Something inside of him shifts.

The next time Pidge's eyes drift to him, he chooses to answer her.

"I'm okay," he says.

His heart agrees.

He doesn't feel like a Galran anymore.

Keith doesn't mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Song Used: No Rain by Blind Melon  
> -'Garron' means 'Guardian'
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


	8. The Months

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. So what did everyone think of S6?   
> Personally I enjoyed it and I also loved all the screen-time they gave Keith.   
> In other news, I hope you guys enjoy the chapter and feedback would be great!   
> Also I'm going to (hopefully) re-edit this tomorrow so if I missed anything big tonight just let me know! :)
> 
> Notes:  
> -Anything that has now happened in S6 is not cannon to this story, besides certain things I already had planned for the future . . . which you guys will find out about in the future and this chapter was written before S6 aired so I'm sticking with my backstory for now. XD  
> -Warnings for some kinda graphic (?) violence in this chapter.

 

**Torment**

**.**

* * *

**Chapter VIII: The Months**

.

.

.

The days Keith spends worrying that Zarkon is going to kill them blur together.

He was the one who said they weren't allowed to die, and now he was saying otherwise? He wasn't faring well with the new information, to put it simply. Not to mention Morok's parting words. They've stuck with Keith since, burned into his brain like the marks burned into his abdomen.

It wasn't like Morok to say such a thing. Keith's never heard him so much as speak out of line and there he was, accusing Keith of seeking the Paladins' approval? Keith wasn't seeking anyone's approval, least of all the Paladins.

Or, so he thought.

But the point was that Keith didn't trust Zarkon, and now he definitely didn't trust Morok, so things were basically going haywire. He worried he couldn't trust anyone, worried that one morning he would wake up and come to find out that the Paladins were killed overnight by Haggar, worried that one day everything would just . . . end. It was exhausting, worrying so much.

Keith hasn't slept.

He also hasn't had an appetite, so his food intake was lower than usual, messing with his senses and lowering his generally fast reflexes. He's stayed some night shifts, watching the Galran guards with hawk-like eyes and well-placed glowers.

Lance and Pidge notice how jumpy he is three days in and it takes Shiro and Hunk five. The fatigue takes a heavy toll on his body; enough so that one day when Keith invites himself into Lance's cell and passes by the Paladin to get to the bed, Lance sees all bone and no muscle. He goes as far as reaching over and pinching his side, finding his ribs way too easily. Keith's so tired that he can't even swat his hand away and he spends the rest of his time sulking from Lance's cot.

All in all, Keith's in bad shape and all of the Paladins are unsure of how to fix him.

"So Kogane my main man," Lance hums as Keith sluggishly passes out the Paladins' dinners exactly a week and a half after returning to his post, "are you gonna tell us what's got you so jumpy?" Keith scowls from Hunk's cell door as he hands him his best attempt at making a calzone.

"I'm not jumpy." Hunk has stars in his eyes as he accepts his food but he's still quick to agree with Lance as he unwraps the foil around his meal, "Lance is right. We've all seen you Kogane. You're jumpy as hell."

"All right,  _fine_. I'm on edge," he grunts as he moves to Lance's cell next. "Nothing to worry about." Lance raises an eyebrow and refuses to take his food so that Keith has to stand there and listen to him. Keith looks up at him with an annoyed glare. "I swear Lance, if you don't take your food within the next ten ticks I'm giving all of it to Pidge."

"I'm okay with that, actually. Lance keep being stubborn. I'm about to get something good out of it." Pidge calls from her cell, chortling to herself.

Lance doesn't move and fixes Keith with a scrutinizing look. "Come on Mullet. Spill."

Keith's stalwart exterior seems to deflate a little. But just a little. "I'm just," he exhales hard, "worried." He mutters, tearing his gaze away from Lance to stare at the two black containers waiting in his hands. Hunk, Shiro and Pidge go absolutely silent, listening as keenly as they can. "I'm nervous Zarkon is going to do something."

"Do something to who?" Lance asks, and a smack is heard from Pidge's cell as she face palms and Hunk sighs and mumbles, not at all quietly, "Seriously Lance?"

Keith meets the Blue Paladin's eyes through the bars of the window. "To all of you," he answers honestly, and then rubs his face against the inside of his elbow—to wake himself up or wipe away unshed tears Lance isn't sure. He doesn't think it's the latter because Keith couldn't possibly care that much about them.

. . . could he?

"I mean if Zarkon decides to do something, I wouldn't be able to stop him. Not me alone. He'd kill me in an instant." He chews on the bottom of his lip, shaking his head, bringing his stare back down to the food nestled in his arms. "I—I keep thinking that I'm going to wake up and you guys are just going to be gone by the time I get down here." Lance goes to open his mouth but Shiro beats him to it, no longer quiet.

"That's why you've been staying some night shifts."

"Yeah," Keith affirms, handing Lance his water bottle through the door slot.

Lance grabs it and takes a long swig. "Hey," Pidge says from her door, Keith turning his head her direction in response, "I can promise you that won't happen. We aren't going down without a fight."

"Never," Hunk insists, and then, "but you aren't going to be able to do  _quiznak_  in protecting us if you keep refusing to sleep."

"You're a walking bag of bones really," Lance points out and Pidge hums her agreement.

"I'll get some sleep tonight," Keith finds himself saying, and the nervous energy that has been thrumming from the Paladins since he walked in decreases noticeably.

"And the next day?" Pidge asks.

Keith can't bring himself to object. Every bone inside of him aches and every time he can't catch Lance before he touches him in some way, whether it be a poke in the side or an arm around his shoulders, makes him miss his top-notch reflexes. "And the next day."

When Lance goes to reach his hand through the door slot for his food, Keith steps back and the Cuban shoots him a disbelieving frown. "C'mon Kogane, I'm hungry. Cut me some slack." Keith looks fairly satisfied with himself as he shakes his head and turns his body in the direction of Pidge's cell.

"I said ten ticks, didn't I?" He quips calmly, deadly serious.

Lance's mouth drops open comically. Keith can't help but smirk as he hands off the Blue Paladin's food to Pidge. (To make up for it, Keith brings Lance a whole chocolate cake later in the evening. Lance doesn't protest and finishes off the whole thing in record time.)

Keith doesn't break his promise to Pidge. He gets some sleep and is back to himself within the next few weeks. All of the Paladins are comforted when they see the sturdy curve of his lean muscles and no more exhaustion smeared across his face.

He smiles more too.

* * *

It's the second day of the Paladins' third month of imprisonment when Lance accidentally gets himself seriously injured. He back talks one too many night guards and they storm his cell, beating him into a bloody pulp. The same rowdy group had then gone after Hunk after he instigated, trying to get them away from Lance, and it had all spiraled from there.

Keith's briefed of what had happened by Movar in the early morning. Morok's away on a mission for a little while, so it leaves Movar in charge of Keith until his brother returns. When Keith makes it down to the cells, Shiro's desperately trying to comfort a crying Pidge from the door of his cell and as soon as he sees Keith he shouts his name.

"Kogane! You need to help them!"

Keith slows down to look over at Shiro, and there's a new cut on his left cheek that wasn't there before. He hopes it doesn't scar like the one over his nose. "Who's more injured?"

"I don't  _know_ ," Shiro all but cries, guilt coloring his letters, and Keith nearly wants to scream  _it wasn't your fault_  at the top of his lungs.

What comes out instead is, "I'll take care of it," as he hurries towards Hunk's cell.

Hunk has a bruised lung, three broken fingers, a swollen cheek, one black eye and can't get any words out that make sense. Keith fears he has a concussion and promises he'll be right back as he goes to check on Lance.

Lance is laying horizontal to an iron pipe slick with his—still wet,  _God_ —blood and with a sick feeling in his stomach Keith realizes why Pidge was crying, why Shiro can barely hold back his own tears. He's still conscious and is cradling his previously broken hand against his chest. With a nauseating turn of his stomach Keith wonders if the sharpshooter of the group will ever be able to hold his gun again, let alone hold the Bayard it forms from.

The bruising on his face is extremely severe, purple and blue sharp against his dark features, and there's a fairly big cut tucked under his chin. The worst of it all is his right knee. It's nearly bent inwards. There's a huge splotch of blood stained through his pant leg and  _so much_  blood around him. "Lance," Keith mumbles, reaching out for him, but Lance moves his head, attempting to shake it in reply.

"No," he whispers, words blending together, "Hunk's worse. Help him first."

"Lance." Keith tries, frozen in place by Lance's intense gaze.

"Mullet." The teen in question answers, leaving no room for argument. "Hunk's my best friend. I-I can't lose him.  _Please_."

"Okay." Keith replies, tone inching towards frantic, "Okay. Just—just hang on. I'll take care of Hunk and then I'm coming back for you."

Lance allows a small smile to appear. "Aye, aye Captain."

Keith's able to get Hunk and Lance to the infirmity. The doctor doesn't argue with Keith this time. He starts bellowing orders to his nurses, Lance and Hunk being towed away to separate operating rooms before Keith can say another word.

The group of Galran guards are removed from the night shift rotation.

Keith doesn't sleep for three days, staying on for the night shift instead.

* * *

Five months in, Keith's finally able to track down the group of Galrans that had incapacitated Hunk and Lance without remorse. There's five in total. He hunts them down one by one, exacting his own revenge. He catches Kardok, an almost-lieutenant, in the bathroom and slams him up against the wall by the scruff of his neck.

He broke two of Hunk's fingers and pounded on Lance.

The Galran is trembling by the time Keith's done threatening him, luxite blade pressed to his throat, and when Keith asks if he's going to go near the Paladins again, Kardok stutters out a no. Keith drops him to the floor, leaving him behind, petrified, in the bathroom.

Benak is a recruit who doesn't know how to stuff his foot in his mouth. He cut Lance under the chin, beat him and went after Shiro, giving the Black Paladin the new cut on his cheek. Keith snags him when he's walking down a deserted hallway, grabbing him roughly by the elbow and knocking him into the wall, the corner jabbing into the young Galran's spine. By the time Keith's done with him, Benak is pleading, begging, to be let go. Keith uppercuts him with the hilt of his blade, leaving him with a cut similar to the one on Lance's chin.

Another recruit, with a bit more experience, by the name of Jargon is the one who gave Hunk a swollen cheek and black eye. Keith finds him in the hangar and throws him to the floor in front of a running fighter ship, holding him down with a boot on his neck. The time to move out of the way of the ship is ticking down fast but Keith doesn't mind and takes his time with talking to the Galran. Jargon nearly yelps for Keith to move, and Keith does, but only after landing a few swift punches to Jargon's gut. The fighter ship screams by, millimeters away from Jargon's purple head. Keith kicks him in the back of the shin for good measure and then vanishes from the hangar before Jargon can say anything else.

The fourth Galran is normally a sentry and who had been put onto the night shift because they were low on Galra and the job had brought out a bloodthirsty part of him that only some Galrans possessed. Keith doesn't waste any time in stabbing his blade into Henaz's stomach, tearing dark purple blood from his light purple skin. Before he can cry out in pain and alert any robot sentries wandering by, Keith shoves a hand over his mouth, thrusting the knife further into his organs.

He broke one of Hunk's fingers, gave him a concussion and was also the one who bruised one of his ribs. "You're going to stay away from them," Keith grits out in an aggressive whisper, "understood?"

"You—"

The knife goes further. It's in so far that Keith can feel the Galran's slippery skin against the back of his hand. Henaz cries out and changes his retort mid-sentence. "Stop! I understand!"

"Good." Keith growls, pulling his knife free and opening the door to the storage closet.

He closes the door on the Galran's foot as he leaves.

Tekak is the fifth and final member of the group. He was also the lieutenant who allowed the whole ordeal to happen. He was the one who shattered Lance's knee and re-broke his hand. Keith doesn't spend too much time with Tekak. He simply takes the metal pipe that was used on Lance and learns Tekak's daily schedule. He says, "Hey Tekak," as he's leaving his sleeping quarters, and as the Galran flips around to answer, Keith swings the pipe two times and shatters both of his kneecaps.

Afterwards, Keith throws the lead pipe into space to get rid of the memory.

* * *

Lance and Hunk almost recover.

Almost.

Lance's right hand, the one that's now been broken twice, had limited movement, possibly for the rest of his life. One of Hunk's previously broken fingers, his left pointer, was currently numb and immovable. The only thing that could possibly heal the bones of both injuries is a cryo-pod located on the Castle of Lions.

The real question was if they were ever going to be able to get there.

* * *

"Are you going to help us get out of here?" Pidge asks on their eighth month of incarceration, her body too small and too pale next to the grey wall she's leaning against.

Keith wants to reply, but can't bring himself to. It's nearly four in the morning and Keith had stayed overnight for night shift instead of the Galran guards. He's been pretty quiet the entire day, but it isn't until late at night that Pidge realizes he's been too quiet.

All of the other Paladins are asleep; Hunk and Lance's snores could nearly be a harmony if they weren't so intolerable. Pidge glances over at him from the corner of her glasses, catching his eye through the door's window. His back is against the wall and he's twirling his blade in one hand.

"How long have we been here, Kogane?" Keith doesn't want to answer that question either. The Green Paladin sighs at Keith's lack of response. "Geez. Give me something. I'm dying over here."

"You aren't dying," Keith remarks curtly, and Pidge releases a large groan as she falls to her butt and slumps against the wall.

"Kogane," she whines teasingly, drawing out the final letter, " _talk_  to me."

"No."

"Why not? Is it something I said?"

Keith breathes out forcibly, "I don't know. I'm just in a mood."

"Obviously," Pidge snorts. Keith spins the knife around two more times.

"You've been here for about eight months." He throws the knife and it wedges itself in the far wall. The symbol engraved into the hilt glows. "I don't know if you're ever going to get out of here."

_Alive_ , his brain tags on, but Keith doesn't say that part out loud.

The discussion ceases just as fast as it had started.

When morning comes and Keith hands out breakfast, Pidge grabs his hand through the slot in the door and squeezes once, trying to provide the comfort she knows he needs about the future. He can only try so hard to hide it.

Keith squeezes back.

* * *

Hunk talks a lot about somebody named Coran. At first Keith butchers his name, more than once too, accidentally calling him Korra one time and Cor-ann another. Hunk also talks a lot about Allura, the woman who had brought all of the Paladins together. Her name is easier to pronounce than Coran's and Hunk promises not to tell the older Altean about how horribly he had messed up after he had first heard it. But the more stories Hunk tells, the easier it is to remember and soon Keith finds himself asking questions about Coran, Allura and the Castle of Lions.

"So you and Pidge have been learning all you can about the ship?"

It's week three of month eleven. Keith and Hunk are sitting on the floor of Hunk's cell, daydreaming about Earthly stars Keith's never seen. "We've definitely been trying," Hunk answers as he straightens the bandana propped on his head.

Their backs are pressed against the frame of the cot, their shoulders brushing occasionally because of how close they're sitting to each other. "Nothing two Garrison engineers can't figure out."

There's an upbeat tone to Hunk's voice but Keith's the opposite, unsure and slightly confused at the mention of the unknown word. "Garrison?"

Hunk looks over, "Oh sorry, sorry. The Galaxy Garrison. It's a flying school, back on Earth. That's where Lance, Pidge and I met."

Hunk launches into a separate conversation about stories from the Garrison. He talks about the time Lance set a microwave on fire while he was trying to warm up some garlic knots, causing the whole school to evacuate. He talks about the time Pidge back-talked a teacher so bad that she was put in detention for a straight month. Hunk talks about his most embarrassing mistake, tripping down the stairs and breaking his arm and having to wear a neon pink cast because they didn't have any other colors left, quite quickly. Keith's smile grows after every story and when Hunk laughs it makes him laugh.

"I've never been to Earth," Keith admits quietly after Hunk finishes telling his story about the time they put plastic wrap on the toilet seat and then Lance's two in the morning mishap, "it sounds really nice." Hunk's eyes widen to the size of saucers and he looks utterly baffled.

"You've never been to Earth? Where—where were you born?  _Here_?"

Keith nods solemnly. "My mom . . . was Galra. Um, the story is that my dad was an explorer in space. Like um . . . "

"Shiro?" Hunk prompts, "He was an astronaut? Checking out planets and stuff?"

"Yeah. An astronaut. So uh, one mission brought my father and his team to a planet far away that was occupied by some Galrans who were scouting it out. Apparently, Dad's friends didn't make it, but he did. He met my mom there and they fell in love. He devoted himself to the Galra cause, assisted them and showed them human foods and things like that. It was touch and go at first but then the Galra came around."

Keith pauses, thinking over his next words.

"Mom and Dad got . . . busy. My mom got pregnant with me and then . . . I killed her."

Hunk's gaze is burning a hole through the side of his head so Keith turns and meets his eyes, something unreadable there. But he can see the sadness there. A sadness for him. A sadness that Keith doesn't deserve because if he was really their friend, he would've been able to get them out of there. To save them.

Hunk seems to get what Keith doesn't say about his mother. "You didn't kill her man," he whispers, sincere as anything, "when things like that happen it's not because of the baby."

Keith scoffs, "I came out of that room and she didn't. I popped out of her, breathing, and she— _died_." His voice falters. His eyes slide down to stare at his hands, which are clasped together in his lap. "If she didn't have me, she would still be here."

"If she didn't have you, we wouldn't have you right here, right now. Okay? Kogane, it's not your fault." Keith feels the tears but refuses to let them out and just shakes his head, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth—

Hunk reaches an arm over and wraps it around Keith's shoulders, pulling him close. Keith's head falls on his shoulder and he goes to move away after a tick but Hunk's warm hold keeps him there, locking him in, like a fluffy cloud, there but not. "It's not your fault," Hunk repeats, and Keith melts in his hold.

Keith likes Hunk.

He's like the big brother he's never had.

* * *

A year and one month.

Keith's in Shiro's cell, the two surrounded by a relaxed silence.

Shiro holds a worn book in his hands. The front cover is almost torn completely off, the top right corners of yellowed pages dog-eared and smudged with stains from dirt and tears. It's from the bottom of Keith's closet, thrown in there carelessly after a fit of rage one day long ago.

His father used to read it to him. The book was passed down to Keith from his father, and his father had gotten it from his father, and so on and forth. Keith figured the Black Paladin could get more use out of it instead of him.

Shiro's already halfway through and as he reads silently next to Keith, Keith finds an interest in staring at the opposite wall. He dozes off three times, and after the third time he's awoken by Shiro's calm voice beside him.

When he glances over he sees the spot in the middle of the book, where Shiro previously was, now marked by a dog-eared corner. Shiro's flipped back to the beginning of the book and he doesn't look up at Keith, instead he just . . . reads.

Keith dozes off to the soft sound of Shiro's voice and for the first time in a while, doesn't have any nightmares. It's ironic, Keith thinks later, as he wakes to Shiro reading silently to himself again—because the last time he didn't have dreams full of nightmares was when his father read that same book to him.

It's silly. It's stupid. It's a kid's book.

But it's enough for Keith.

* * *

"I don't think you should go." Keith says bluntly from his spot next to the wall as he watches his father meddle with his radio. It wasn't able to pick up any frequencies the day before and his father had promised to take a look at it. His father hums at Keith's words, biting back a hiss when he accidentally shocks himself with one of the wires he's working with.

"Sorry kiddo. I have to go."

"You don't. Zarkon said it wasn't required, I heard him."

His father swings around in his chair, eyeballing his son. "Were you listening from the vents again? I thought you grew out of that." Fourteen year old Keith scowls but his father can tell he's holding back a smile.

"No," he grumbles, looking down. "I was out in the hallway. Those robot sentries suck at their jobs."

"Hey," his father scolds, pointing a finger, "language."

Keith rolls his eyes as his dad turns back around and resumes fiddling with the busted radio. Keith's father grins as he rigs the wires correctly and the radio crackles back to life, blaring the soft guitar notes of some old song. "Got it," he says proudly as he stands from the chair, turning around to face his son.

Keith looks unimpressed. "Thanks."

He's upset that he has to go on this mission, his father knows, but there's nothing he can do about it. He needs to go. It's slightly crazy and extremely dangerous, but Keith's father is all-in. He will help the Galra win this war no matter the risks, even if one of those risks is dying and never being able to see his beautiful baby boy again.

"I really don't want you to go," Keith whispers, "I have a really bad feeling about this mission, Dad."

Keith's father reaches out and rests a hand on his shoulder, trying his best to reassure him that everything will be okay. "Nothing is gonna happen to me, son. I promise."

Keith shakes his head, "Dad  _please_ —"

His father smiles softly and pulls Keith into his arms, Keith's head coming to a rest underneath the rough stubble of his chin. "Promise," he murmurs again, holding his son tight. "I can't leave you alone just yet."

His father does just that when he dies on that mission—leaving Keith behind, and alone.


	9. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I don’t really have an excuse for taking so long with this next chapter . . . I really think it was a mess of writer’s block and tons of distractions with other fandoms I want to write for and then I can’t figure out how and so on. But, if you’ve stuck around, thank you so much and I’m gonna try to get the next chapter asap. Also, huge thanks to those of you that left reviews in my little absence, it was always motivating to see a new one in my inbox!
> 
> Notes:  
> -Same go around as last time, anything that has happened in the show is still not canon with the story  
> -Warnings for some more references to some more bad stuff happening to Pidge, nothing explicit

 

**Torment**

**.**

* * *

  **Chapter IX: The End**

**.**

**.**

**.**

They go after the Green Paladin.

_Pidge_ , Keith reminds himself as he races down the hallway, feet skidding and heart pounding, _they went after Pidge_.

He hears Shiro shouting before he’s even in the hallway, and his voice is strangled by guilt and fear but more noticeably resentment. It’s like a lion roaring, Keith thinks as he runs past his cell, and the lion roars louder when he sees the flash of a body through the door’s window.

"Help her!" He yells so loud that it’s damn near deafening, causing Keith to wobble on his feet. "Kogane!" He shouts again when Keith doesn't answer, and by then he's passing Lance's cell.

Lance and Hunk are shouting too, voices a mix of raw anger and terrified begging, and Keith's fingers tremble as he fumbles with the keys attached to his hip. Idly, Keith wonders when he became puppet master, pulling the strings of so many innocent lives.

"Kogane!"

"I'm trying!" He snaps back, cursing under his breath when he accidentally jams the wrong key into the rusty lock. For some reason he can hear Hunk sobbing, and feel Lance staring right at him, his gaze burning more than a hole into his back. If they didn’t hate him before, they must sure as hell hate him now.

"I'm trying," he whispers to himself as he tries another key that's supposed to be the right one, and God he hopes so, but then the door gives and he nearly collapses from relief. He runs into the cell faster than his brain can process, and before he even knows what he’s doing he's gathering a bloody Pidge in his arms— _there's so much blood, there's too much blood she's bleeding out_ —and he cradles her still form to his chest as he struggles to find her most prominent injuries.

It’s all visible, like whoever did this wanted him to see the horror that was done and he doesn’t allow his mind to even fathom the thought that she might not make it. His stomach rolls the more he looks— _you did this-you did this-you're Galra-it's all your fault_ —and when he finds a knife wound near her neck his heart stops.

They aren't allowed to die. They aren’t allowed to die because if they die he’ll be alone again and he can’t be alone. He can’t do this alone anymore. He can’t let anyone else leave him.

_“Sorry kiddo. I have to go.”_

_“You don’t.”_

You aren’t supposed to be able to control fate. It’s set in stone long before you’re born and no one’s able to control the destiny that’s been set for you. You follow the path blindly all your life, and you don’t question the bumps in the road or the dead-ends, you just keep moving forward. Keith doesn’t remember who told him about fate, or the story behind it, but he does know he’s never questioned the path.

But to hell with fate. To hell with it all.

"Hang in there, Pidge," he whispers before carefully placing her back on the ground.

He’s not letting her die. He’s not letting any of them die.

She reaches for his hand when he goes to move away and she catches his thumb just barely, her grip weak against his calloused skin, and he hesitates for just a second before closing his hand around hers.

He squeezes once, gently as to not hurt her, and then pulls back— _there's blood on him, there's blood running down her hand, why-why-why_ —standing to his full height, his eyes staying locked with her half-open ones. “I'll be right back. You're going to be okay.” Her eyes slip closed. “Stay with me. Stay with me okay? You hear me?"

She doesn't answer and Keith worries that she's already dead.

"Pidge?" Her head turns. Her lips move. Her chest rises. "Stay with me okay?" He repeats, and her head lolls into a nod.

“Okay,” she mumbles, her voice hardly audible.

“Okay,” he echoes, nodding, “okay. Okay I’ll be right back. I’ll be back.”

_“Nothing is gonna happen to me, son. I promise.”_

_“Dad please—“_

He's running out of the cell as fast as his feet can carry him and Shiro's roaring again and Hunk's sobbing so hard that Keith feels it in his bones. “Where is she? Why aren't you helping her?” Keith pauses in front of Shiro's cell, to pacify him or himself he doesn't know, but he does know he needs to hurry.

"She’s hurt too badly, Shiro.” It’s not the first time Keith’s referred to the Black Paladin through his actual name. It’s been a little over a year now and he’s come to look at Shiro like the father figure he’s been missing, like an older brother that’s been away at flight school. “I-I need to get her help—“

“Help?" Shiro questions loudly, sounding bewildered and angry all at once, and if he was really a lion his teeth would be baring, "The Galra won't help her! They’ll leave her to die in that cage because our lives mean absolutely nothing to them! Don’t you understand that Kogane?"

Keith understands better than he should. In the end, the Paladins are just pawns in a much, much worse game.

“They will!” Keith argues, losing his usual cool, tone equal in volume, “None of you are allowed to die!"

And just like that it’s quiet.

Keith's breathing just as heavy as Shiro, and it's like dust settling over a barren battlefield, so heavy and suffocating that it's like the battle's still there. The sound of his own blood is screaming in his empty ears. One tick passes. Then two. Lance is still staring, completely silent. It's so unlike him that Keith's skin crawls.

When Shiro slams his metal fist into the cell door Keith's not expecting it and jumps back like a cat startled off a ledge. “Go get help,” Shiro rasps, voice worn from so much yelling.

Keith nods, almost at a loss for words, and glances back at Lance. Something in him tells him to speak, tells him he needs to say something, so he does. "Lance—"

"So this was all just an act? You being our friend, that was a lie?"

Keith blanches, and his heart sinks like it's attached to an anchor. "What?" He whispers, horrified, unable to hide the emotion coming through, "No Lance, no, no you've got it all wrong—"

He’s grasping for words just out of his reach.

"The Galra set you up to this. Let me the guess, the orders sounded something like—"

"Lance." Keith begs, crumbling too much too fast.

"—just befriend them enough that they think they have a friend. Someone they can trust. Befriend them just enough so that they don't kill themselves. Befriend them just enough that suicide isn't on their minds, so that instead we can kill them our way, after we pry the information we need from their broken hands."

Hunk's not sobbing anymore. Or if he still is, Keith can't hear it anymore.

“No,” Keith tries in a final attempt to set the story straight, but Shiro interrupts before he can try.

"Kogane!"

The shout brings him back to the present, so with a resigned look Keith turns and runs away.

* * *

“Zenak!”

The alien turns around just in time to get a punch to the jaw, and it has enough power behind it that Keith’s fingers crack from the impact. “What the hell Kogane?” He yells, reeling from the hit, and Keith’s already making another fist and advancing towards him.

“I told you not to fucking go near her,” he growls and Zenak’s eyes widen as he dodges Keith’s second punch. The Galran backs up and holds up his hands, shaking his head.

“I didn’t!”

Keith’s blood is already boiling, but the lie makes it worse. He narrows his eyes. “I know you’re on Haggar’s fucking torture squad and I know somebody tried to—“

The word catches, as it always does, as it did when he told the Paladins about all her injuries. As it did when he told Pidge, after she woke up and had a foggy memory about the whole incident. The doctors hadn’t explicitly stated it in their official report of her injuries, but Keith had saw the bruising around her wrists and she might’ve had a somewhat absent memory of the whole thing, but she couldn’t forget that it was Zenak who was gotten on top of her and tried again.

“It wasn’t me, Kogane!”

“Stop with the lies Zenak,” Keith shouts, livid, closing the distance between him and the alien and grabbing at his collar with a vice-like grip. He shoves him back into the wall, their faces inches apart, Keith seething from the anger coursing through his veins. “She’s a fucking kid, Zenak, and I don’t care if she’s a Paladin or not, you don’t go near her and you make so no one else does either or else I’m going to fucking kill you, you got it?”

Keith doesn’t know when he grabbed for his blade, but it’s there, pushing up against Zenak’s dark purple neck, and he’s holding the wrapped handle tight enough that his knuckles are white. “I didn’t go through with it!” Zenak says finally, eyes blown wide, “It was all that fucking witch! She said she wanted ‘lasting damage’ and all I did was go to get on top of her and then before anything could happen Zarkon was in the doorway.”

It’s new information to Keith, since that’s when Pidge’s memory is muddled.

“Why?” Keith says through gritted teeth, pushing the blade forward. A thin line of blood dribbles down Zenak’s neck. When Zenak doesn’t answer, Keith presses harder. “ _Why,_ Zenak?”

“Alright, alright! Just move the fucking blade back!”

The pressure of the knife disappears.

“Zarkon said that it wasn’t time yet. He told the witch that he still had plans for each of them, and after that, then he wouldn’t need them around anymore.”

“When?”

Zenak shakes his head, “I don’t know! All he said was soon.”

Soon.

Keith doesn’t miss the irony.

* * *

Lance hasn’t talked to Keith in what feels like months.

Any questions Keith asks him are ignored, and he’ll accept his drink and sometimes his food but nothing else. He’s been eating a lot less, talking quieter, making less jokes, and none of it sits right in Keith’s stomach. He feels like something is wrong, but he can’t pinpoint what exactly.

Pidge is . . . recovering.

It’s been a while since the incident and she’s almost back to herself, but Keith isn’t too sure if it’s ever possible to get fully past something like that. The ship lands on a planet that’s notoriously known for it’s black market shops, and Keith spends his time trading some of his life savings for some things for the Paladins. He picks out a special thing for each of them, and decides to give Pidge her gift on a night where he sticks around for the night-shift instead of getting sleep.

Shiro gives him a disapproving look after Keith waves off the group of Galrans that come to relieve him of his shift and Hunk’s eyebrow lifts up but Keith offers no explanation, instead joining in on the conversations they have in the hours to come.

It’s mostly Hunk who talks to Pidge, with Shiro putting in his two cents here and there, and Lance is so oddly silent in his cell that Keith checks on him through the door’s window four different times. Each time he’s in the same spot on his cot, back turned towards the door so that Keith can’t see his face, and the only thing that reassures Keith that he’s still breathing is the steady rise and fall of his shoulders after every breath.

Shiro’s the first to call it a night, bidding everyone a goodnight before heading over to his own cot, and Hunk follows about an hour later.

Pidge talks with Keith for another fifteen minutes before going silent for a while and Keith double checks on Lance one last time before quietly unlocking Pidge’s cell and heading inside.

She’s still awake, laying on her back with her arms crossed over her chest, blinking up at the lifeless ceiling. Keith can see her jerk out of the corner of his eye when he enters, the hair on her arms standing up as she quickly flips over to see who it is. She visually relaxes once she sees that it’s Keith, and he offers a small smile as he pauses in the middle of the room.

One of his arms is tucked behind his back, which is peculiar, but Pidge brushes it off because she trusts him, which yes was even a surprise to her. She was usually the last person to trust people, even with her slightly outgoing attitude with strangers, but something about Keith she knew was true.

He wasn’t the bad guy, and she knew he didn’t think so about himself either.

“Can I sit?”

There’s something—dare she say— _happy_ about his tone and she allows a smile to cross her own face when she hears it. She sits up and crosses her legs underneath her before patting the now vacant spot next to her. Keith makes his way over and takes a seat, the cot squeaking under the added weight.

Pidge flinches at the sudden sound and loses herself for a few seconds. Keith watches her carefully. It happens to her sometimes, her getting lost in her own mind after a sudden sound or something alike, and Keith makes sure there’s always somebody to steady her when she finally comes back. Most of the time it’s Shiro; sometimes it’s him.

“I got you something,” he says after a few moments, the rough rumble of his voice bringing her back to shore. “I know Zero Point isn’t your favorite but it’s all I could find—“

He’s barely pulled the ratty comic book from behind his back before she’s grabbing it from him and flipping eagerly through the pages with an awestruck expression. “Holy shit Kogane,” she whispers, shaking her head in disbelief, “I can’t believe this.”

Keith shrugs, “It was nothing. Really. I know it’s your favorite series and I wanted to get you at least one thing that would help past the time. I’m sorry it’s not your favorite book of the series though . . . what was it again? Foreign Element or something?”

Instead of answering, Pidge reaches over and hugs him, her grip strong but gentle.

Keith doesn’t . . . he doesn’t _do_ hugs but there’s a warm feeling in his heart as she hugs him and he thinks that maybe he’s been missing out on something else his entire life.

Friendship wasn’t so overrated after all.

It takes him a minute to reach his arms up and hug back. “This is my new favorite,” she whispers after, and Keith has trouble holding back a chuckle and a smile.

* * *

“Now entering Zone Twelve,” Shiro says as he guides the rest of the Lions into the meteor-ridden section of space, and Lance is already having none of it.

“We’re totally going to get murdered,” he mutters as he steers Red with one hand, and he’s happy to note that Red agrees that there’s something not right about this whole situation. She keeps telling him to double-check his surroundings, though he doesn’t quite know why; there’s nothing around them but chunks of meteors.

“There’s no signs of human, or alien, life appearing on my scans,” Hunk muses and Pidge groans out loud.

“Lance we’re not getting murdered,” she snaps, “knock it off.”

“I’m just saying—“

“Lance,” Shiro warns sternly, which the Blue Paladin ignores.

“—I’m just _saying_ that it’s extremely suspicious to me that someone who was supposedly being held captive by the Galra somehow rigs up a radio or mic or something to a frequency that would be able to reach us from all the way out here, and then knows the exact coordinates he’s in and exactly which ship he’s imprisoned on. I mean come on, and I’m sorry, but Shiro you had no idea where you were at when you were with the Galra right?”

Lance’s thoughts cause everyone to go silent. The only sound in everyone’s ears for a while is the whooshing of the wind as the Lions advance further into the meteor field and finally Shiro speaks, his voice sounding slightly tense. “No. I didn’t,” he says, “and I know this whole thing seems out of place, but we have to check. If there truly is a human who was able to escape the Galra, then we need to help them.”

“And if there isn’t?” It’s Allura who asks, and her voice is as calm as always but Lance picks up on something behind the scenes.

Shiro exhales.

“And if there isn’t then we get the hell out of here.”

Pidge hums in agreement, “This is place is creepy.”

A quiet, “Ditto,” comes from Hunk seconds after as the five Paladins push onwards, each Lion scanning for different life forms nearby. Coran and the Castle of Lions isn’t too far off, only one quick wormhole jump away if needed, but everyone had agreed that it was safer for Coran to be away from any danger, if any occurred.

Lance decides to humor himself and start up a scan for any new radio frequencies with a few quick taps, and Red purrs cautiously, the Lion’s message loud and clear.

“Guys, Red doesn’t like this,” he voices for her as he carefully navigates around a rock easily the size of one of the moons of Saturn, and he hears Pidge inhale quietly as the five of them come face to face with the remains of a planet and a Galran fleet.

“I think we found the place,” she whispers, and there’s a tremble to her voice that Lance doesn’t miss.

The planet is blown to smithereens, chunks of forgotten buildings here and there, frozen bodies rotted to their cores drifting aimlessly, weapons missing their calibers knocking into dismembered arms—the sight is gruesome and too recent. Far too recent. The rational part of Lance’s brain screams at him as Hunk mutes his mic so that he can retch that none of this is right, that message played as if it had been recorded from a dull, dark corner somewhere and if fighting was going on outside they would’ve heard it.

They would’ve heard something.

“There’s the cargo ship,” Shiro murmurs as he gently guides Black towards it. It’s the only Galran ship still intact, which sends a rumble of uncertainty through all of them, but the strangest and most unnerving part of it all is that the bay door of cargo ship sixty-five is miraculously wide open.

“This doesn’t add up.” Thank God Pidge was also seeing reason, Lance thinks as they follow their leader to where he hovers above the abandoned ship.

“I also don’t like this.” Hunk says as he does a scan of the ship, “but there is somebody in there.”

“Of course there is,” Lance grumbles, “and of course we’re going to go in—“

“Allura, stay here with the Lions for backup fire if we need it. Hunk, Pidge, Lance on me. We’re going in.”

“Please be careful, Paladins,” she says in lieu of a response, moving to a defensive position in front of the Lions, but her weapons pointed directly at the cargo ship. Shiro ejects from Black followed by Pidge and Hunk and Lance groans as he does the same.

“We’re getting murdered,” he quips as he jetpacks over to where the other three are already waiting for him in the ship and Pidge elbows him as soon as he’s close enough.

“Stop jinxing us,” she whispers angrily as she turns her Bayard into a shield.

Lance rolls his eyes and then his Bayard turns into his marksman rifle so that he can double check corners as they advance. Shiro leads them deeper into the ship, and every creak from the craft makes him jump and whip towards the noise.

Just as Shiro goes to step into the control center a loud creak from the right startles him and at the same time he goes to turn and his flashlight lands on the pale skin of a human decked out in Galran armor, his comm screeches with static.

“It’s an ambush!” Allura shouts, the distant sounds of lasers and guns deaf to his ears as he lifts the flashlight to the human’s face. As the beam of light travels up the man’s torso, Shiro can clearly see the barrel of a firearm already pointed directly at his heart, and he can hear the safety click off as he’s confronted by a smirk and brown eyes that are gleaming with malicious intent.

Lance is firing blindly down the hallway behind Shiro as Pidge takes cover behind Hunk, who is already doing the same with his machine gun. Galran robot sentry after robot sentry are flooding down the hallway in a stream of silver and when one falls five more take its place. None of their shots are landing anywhere near where the Paladins are and in the back of Shiro’s mind he wonders if it’s on purpose as the older man in front of him finally speaks.

“The good guys are always so gullible,” and his voice rumbles the same way it did in the recording, profound and hoarse, and now that Shiro’s hearing the man up close he can even pick up that there’s a slight southern lilt to his words.

Pidge turns when she hears the voice, but before she can do much else a Galran’s grabbing her around the waist and pulling her flush to his chest. The cold feel of a blade to her neck freezes her still; Hunk and Lance don’t notice over the roar of gunfire.

Shiro works to find his voice, and he wills the flashlight not to shake in his hand as he takes in every feature on the man’s face. He’s no older than forty-five with a short beard decorating his chin and curving around his lips and a full head of black hair, and there’s something deeply unsettling in his eyes. He’s broad but a bit on the shorter side in terms of height, though his appearance doesn’t suffer from it. The armor framing his fit figure is definitely Galran and high-ranking Galran at that and allows the muscles of his bare arms to be shown.

Shiro swallows. “Why are you doing this?”

The barrel of the rifle presses into Shiro’s chest. He wonders if the man can feel how fast his heart is beating through the metal of the gun. The man’s smirk widens, “Because I’m loyal to those I serve son, and if they want Voltron, then they’re getting Voltron.” Shiro’s quiet for a few uneasy moments as he assesses the situation.

Then he strikes, kicking the man in the thigh and bringing him down to one knee. His finger slips off the trigger. “Allura!” He shouts as the man lets out a snarl of anger. “Get out of here! Get the Lions out of here!”

Allura’s voice cracks with interference, “What?” She asks, bewildered, “No! I’m not leaving you!”

The man is able to return to his full height but not before aiming a punch for Shiro’s head, which he’s luckily able to dodge, “No you need to get out of here! It’s the Galra, they’re after us and I can’t let them get to you so please just go!”

“Shiro,” Allura’s voice is pitched with pain, “Shiro _no_ —”

“Allura. Please.”

Lance grunts as a Galran solider pops out of the shadows and rams into his side, sending him flying into the far wall. Hunk goes to help but is knocked down by a different Galran who kicks his Bayard out of his reach as he hits the floor with a thump that echoes down the hall. The sentries advance, crowding around the rest of Shiro’s team, making it so that there’s no way out.

Shiro feels the panic building within him, clawing it’s way to the surface, but he refuses to let the emotion show on his face, refuses to let this man see anything other than a fearless leader before him. Allura’s been silent as he’s fought off the man’s advances, blocking his punches and throwing the gun from his hand, and it’s only when Shiro begins to lose some strength that she finally answers.

“They have all of you?” There’s a strange emotion to her voice that Shiro can’t quite place. He spares a quick glance towards the mangled team behind him. Hunk already has handcuffs on, Lance is already screaming for them to let go of Pidge, and Pidge is fighting tooth and nail to get out of the massive Galran’s hold to no success. They’re outnumbered by a landslide.

There’s no chance for escape.

“Yes.”

“I’m—I’m so sorry Shiro. I don’t want to leave.”

Shiro can’t help but smile, “There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry for leading us into this mess.” The man gets the upper hand and lands a blow to Shiro’s side, and he bites back a groan as pain explodes there. He had to admit, the son of a bitch had one hell of a punch.

“Shiro?” Her voice is alarmed, “Are you—“

“I’m okay, Allura. I’m okay.” 

The man swipes Shiro’s legs from underneath him, knocking the Paladin to the ground painfully. Shiro gasps as the man jams the muzzle of the gun into the space between his ribs and lower abdomen, rendering him still. In the distance he can hear the afterburners of the Lions as they rocket off, Allura and the Lions disappearing just as fast as they had appeared. He holds Allura’s final words close to his heart.

“I promise I’ll find you all again. Don’t ever lose hope.”

The man smiles down at him and it’s almost like he doesn’t even care that the Lions are gone.

Something about that unnerves Shiro too.

“We’re gonna have a whole lot of fun with you.” He says, pushing the gun in further, causing Shiro to writhe in pain. He glances over to his fellow Galran and nods once, and one swift movement the other three Paladins are knocked unconscious. He lifts the butt of his gun and does the same to Shiro and then sighs, taking a long look at each of the armored Paladins and something stalls inside of him, if only for a second. It’s been so long since he’s seen other humans in space and it’s almost a sight for sore eyes.

Almost.

“I have no doubt you’ll be in the best hands of the galaxy.” He smiles beside himself, flashes of a face he hasn’t seen in so long obscuring his vision, and he knows their guard will get the job done, for better or for worse.

* * *

When the Paladins had first arrived, bound by intergalactic chains and escorted by flocks of purple, Keith allowed the stories and myths that had been told over and over again in his childhood go to his head. They were cannibals in some carnations, and murderers in others. As he grew up, Keith learned what was truly fiction and what wasn’t.

It turned out that the Galra liked to lie to their young, and even with Keith’s father peppering in the truth here and there, it still wasn’t enough. The Paladins weren’t killers—slayers of evil maybe—but never killers.

Keith treated them wrongly. He knows that, and he’ll admit that. He even hates himself for it because how could he ever think of _being_ good when he couldn’t _act_ good? But he was at war with himself, torn between right and wrong because he was raised wrong by the people who he thought were so, so right.

Things were different now.

“Kogane. Did you hear me?”

Keith startles, meeting the emotionless eyes of Emperor Zarkon. “Yes sir,” he rumbles, standing up straighter, “you were discussing the war plans and how it would be better if fleet seventy-two invaded the other quadrant.”

Zarkon looks unimpressed, “Would it?” He questions slowly, the rest of the war room deathly silent. Keith calms his racing heartbeat the best he can.

“I think so, sir, but it would be best to check with your war advisors.”

“Yes,” Zarkon mutters, nodding, and Keith wonders how much longer he can keep this up, lying to the biggest threat in any galaxy.

Zarkon seems pleased with Keith’s response however, and changes the subject easily after.

“Haggar,” he turns to the witch sitting beside him, “are our plans in place?” Keith risks a glance at Morok standing to the right of him, but the older Galran keeps his eyes on their emperor. 

It’s the first time Keith’s seen Haggar since she tried to kill him. She doesn’t look at him, but her hood’s pulled back enough that he can see the damage he did to her. There’s a freshly healed white scar from her left eyebrow to the side of her nose, and her left eye is hazy, clouded, and Keith almost smirks. Her lips are pulled back in the same snarl he had yet forgotten.

“Yes sire,” she drones, and Keith swears she looks directly at him, “the Paladins are to be executed tomorrow at first light.”

His stomach churns, and his heart stops. His mouth opens and closes uselessly, like he’s nothing more than a fish out of water. Something nudges his side—Morok, he thinks—and it’s only then that he realizes his one hand had shot down to grip at his trusted blade. He quickly releases it.

“Executed?”

Keith’s surprised with how steady his voice sounds, considering he feels far less steady himself. Haggar shoots him a glare, “Yes, _executed_ you abhorrent—“

“Haggar.” The witch goes quiet at Zarkon’s tone and then all eyes are once again on Keith. “Trying to find the Lions through them has been nothing but a waste of time and if we kill them now, it’ll take years for new Paladins to be chosen, and that will be enough to end this war once and for all.”

Vaguely, Keith registers Morok pinching his elbow, and it reminds Keith to keep his expression neutral. “What exactly are you going to do to them, sir?”

The words make Zarkon smile malevolently, “Haggar has quite a few things in mind that I think you’re going to enjoy Kogane.”

* * *

Pidge jolts awake, breathing heavily as her eyes adjust to the dark.

It was just another nightmare, she tells herself as she checks to make sure she still has all ten fingers and all ten toes. She exhales shakily, and shivers when the cold air hits her spine, and then another sound makes her jump.

She turns towards the door just in time to see the door open and close, and then Keith’s rushing towards her, a tremor to his hands and his blade slick with blood from where he has it tucked into the belt of his pants.

His usual Galran armor is gone, replaced instead by a red, white and yellow jacket that shields a tattered black tee-shirt underneath. His cargo pants are ripped at the knee and the smell of copper is heavy in the room.

Keith reaches her bedside with breathtaking speed and he’s tugging her hand towards the door before she can get any words out. “Kogane,” she finally sputters, a million questions racing through her head, “Kogane what’s going on? What’s happening?”

He doesn’t waste another second. “I’m getting you out. All of you.”


End file.
